It’s not the most Westerny of art museums—even when only counting museums east of the Mississippi River—but the Chrysler Museum of Art, like many other great museums across the country, has Western art amid its collection. Thomas Hill, Albert Bierstadt, Thomas Moran and many other important works are part of the collection. 
Greta Pratt, Julee and her Daughters, Chandler, AZ, 2014, printed in 2019, archival pigment print. Gift of the artist, 2019.15.
The museum, located in Norfolk, Virginia, unveiled a new exhibition featuring recent gifts to the museum. One of the works is a contemporary photograph by Greta Pratt that not only represents the West, but also women in the West, Western fashion, the Arizona landscape, silver-adorned parade saddles and modern rodeos. The image, Julee and her Daughters, Chandler, AZ, will be part of Building a Legacy: Chrysler Collects for the Future, which opens November 19 and continues through March 6, 2022. The exhibition is presented in conjunction with the 50th anniversary of Walter P. Chrysler Jr.’s transformative gift of art to the Chrysler Museum of Art.
Pratt’s image comes from a series of work titled A Glimpse of Something Shining, which features numerous Western subjects, including Native American dancers, horses and riders, Southwestern culture and hunting. Pratt’s website notes that she is “concerned with issues of national identity and American myth,” and she is an author of three monographs of her work: The Wavers, Using History and In Search of the Corn Queen. Her work is included in major public and private collections and has been shown in Art in America, New York Times Sunday Magazine and The New Yorker, along with numerous books and catalogs, nationally as well as internationally. She was also nominated for a Pulitzer Prize.
For more information about the museum or the exhibition, visit www.chrysler.org.
Calling all Western art museums! Have a recently acquired painting or sculpture? Email the details to mclawson@westernartcollector.com.
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