Curating the West

Each Month We Ask Leading Museum Curators About What’s Going On In Their World.

John Fawcett
Board Member & Chairman of Exhibitions and Acquisitions Committees
Steamboat Art Museum
Steamboat Springs, CO
(970) 870-1755
www.steamboatartmuseum.org

What event (gallery show, museum exhibit, etc.) in the next few months are you looking forward to, and why?
Andrew Wyeth: Home Places which opens at the Brandywine Museum of Art in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania, on February 4, 2023. I have been a member of the museum committee at the Brandywine for many years and always look forward to new exhibits featuring any members of the Wyeth family. Our committee helps curate new shows, considers gifts to the collection and votes on deaccessioning pieces if we feel they do not fit with our mission statement. This upcoming exhibit is a presentation of nearly 50 works of local buildings that Andrew Wyeth captured in drawings and paintings over seven decades, and have been loaned by the Andrew and Betsy Wyeth Foundation for American Art, which is managed by the museum.

Interesting exhibit, gallery opening or work of art you’ve seen recently.
Sargent and Spain at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., which was on view October 2, 2022, through January 2, 2023. This was an unbelievable collection of some 140 oils, watercolors, drawings and photographs of Sargent’s travels to Spain from seven visits to the country between 1879 and 1912. He depicted local people, architectural details, landscapes and traditions from different areas of the country. The catalogue raisonné—written by Richard Ormond, his great nephew, and Elaine Kilmurray—is a wonderful synopsis of the exhibit, which Sargent fans will love!

What are you reading?
I just finished reading Apertures: Findings from a Rural Life by Mary B. Kurtz, who is a friend and neighbor living in the Elk River Valley near our ranch in northwest Colorado. This is an astounding portrait of her husband Pete and her raising their family on a rural ranch with quarter horses and livestock, and the hardships and the joys of their work. Mary’s deep sense of home place and the environs surrounding their family is exquisite, describing the wildlife, the flora and fauna, and the thrill of their children returning to the ranch with their own children after living in other areas. It is a wonderful book to curl up by the fire with in the winter! I also am reading Leonardo da Vinci by Walter Isaacson, which is the story of the painter of two of the most famous paintings in history, Mona Lisa and The Last Supper. It is an interesting portrayal of his incredible life as an artist and a scientist. He was very curious, which I believe is a “must” for artists, and was very eccentric in his creativity.

What are you researching at the moment?
I am currently gathering information on Roman Nose, the great Cheyenne war chief who possibly led more attacks against the emigrants on the Oregon Trail than anyone. He was proud and boastful, always rode a fine horse and wore a war bonnet, which was his trademark. As an artist, I am always looking for specific accoutrements that told the story of the man.

What is your dream exhibit to curate? Or see someone else curate?
I would love to curate an exhibit of my heroes: Sargent, Sorolla, Anders Zorn, Winslow Homer and Andrew Wyeth. All of these artists hold a deep place in my heart, as they all, like me, painted in watercolor and oil (with the exception of Wyeth who did egg tempera). Sargent never wanted to sell his watercolors and used them as studies, until a New York gallery talked him into a show where he sold “the whole lot” of 85 watercolors for $241 a piece to the Brooklyn Museum of Art in 1905. Homer did more than 700 watercolors in his life, which were a means of income while he veered away from illustration and concentrated on larger oils. He sold the watercolors for $30 to $50 a piece, and a record price of $2,200 upon his death in 1910 contributed to the acceptance of the medium. —