The Brinton MuseumKenneth L. Schuster, Director & Chief Curator
The Brinton Museum
Big Horn, WY, (307) 672-3173, www.thebrintonmuseum.org
What event (gallery show, museum exhibit, etc.) in the next few months are you looking forward to, and why?
We are currently in the process of installing T. Allen Lawson: Recollections and Reflections, it is a retrospective exhibition showcasing Tim’s work over the past 39 years. The show presents the evolution of a brilliant painter from his initial emergence as an already accomplished artist at the age of 19, to his current work, which appears as accessible to the viewer as his 1982 painting Madison River Bull. In reality, his current work Winter Solitude, is so much more sophisticated that, without being able to reference the work created over the intervening years, we could easily believe that it was produced by a completely different painter. For Lawson’s work has grown from that talented teenager’s rendering into paintings filled with artistic nuance unimaginable to that young talent.
What are you reading?
People of the Sacred Mountain by Fr. Peter John Powell. It is a two-volume book which presents the history of the Northern Cheyenne Chiefs and Warrior Societies from 1830-1879. Not only is Fr. Powell a great personal friend and member of the Brinton Museum’s board of directors, he is also the consummate scholar on the Northern Cheyenne People. We feel very fortunate to have a working relationship with the Northern Cheyenne People’s Tribal Preservation Office and are currently storing a magnificent painted buffalo hide for them, which dates from 1876.
Interesting exhibit, gallery opening or work of art you’ve seen recently.
The current pandemic has basically terminated travel to museum exhibitions for me, but I would like to have seen the Field Museum’s Aspáalooke Women and Warriors Exhibition; however, I hear the Museum of the Rockies may be hosting it in 2022, so perhaps I’ll get another chance. On a related note, we are beginning a collaboration with Ben Pease, an Aspáalooke artist, whose work was prominently featured in the Chicago show and the Western Heritage Center and Stapleton Gallery in Billings, which will coincide with the show at Museum of the Rockies.
What are you researching at the moment?
I have several irons in the fire, ongoing research on Hans Kleiber and E.W. “Bill” Gollings. I’m also working on a short blurb for a Winold Reiss TBM publication and am always interested in anything that has to do with Fra Dana and her time here in the Sheridan area. I feel she may be the most under-appreciated artist to come out of Sheridan County—sorry Montana, she was here first.
What is your dream exhibit to curate? Or see someone else curate?
A show featuring Hans, Bill and Fra which would travel nationally, and the funding and good health to see the project through to its completion.—
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