Although bison are native to Jackson Hole, Wyoming, they were eradicated by the mid-1880s. In 1948, a small herd was brought to the valley and caged in a wildlife park. In 1968, 15 bison broke through the park’s fences. Eventually, the National Park Service decided to let them roam freely in the valley’s picturesque meadows, which more than 500 of their descendants continue to do today.
Charles M. Russell (1864-1926), Montana Winter, 1905, gouache on paper, 12 x 19 in. Gifted anonymously in honor of the trustees, staff and volunteers who served the Museum during its first 30 years, National Museum of Wildlife Art.
The National Museum of Wildlife Art in Jackson Hole is celebrating its neighbors in the exhibition Bison-tennial: From Colonization to Rematriation through August 23. Drawing from the museum’s permanent collection and loans from the Denver Art Museum as well as from contemporary Native American artists, curator Kennis Forte has assembled works not often displayed that encourage new perspectives on one of the most enduring stories of the American west.
Montana Winter, 1905, by Charles M. Russell, depicts the bison gathered tightly together against a harsh winter storm while three wolves approach. Bison’s greatest predator, other than man, is the wolf. They single out a young, old or sick member of the herd while the rest of the herd moves away. In Russell’s painting, a bull and a calf turn to look at the three wolves closing in for the attack.
A more contemporary interpretation of a bison was painted in his distinctive style by John Nieto. The 5-by-4-foot canvas impresses by its size and by Nieto’s brilliant Fauvist colors. Born to a Mescalero Apache mother and a Hispano father, he was encouraged by his grandmother to “paint my people.” He then dedicated his work to Native American themes and Western wildlife.
John Nieto (1936-2018), Taos Buffalo, 1993, acrylic on canvas, 60 x 48 in. JKM Collection, National Museum of Wildlife Art.
In 1959, he attended the exhibition, Les Fauves, at the Dallas Museum of Art. The artists’ bold, unnatural colors and energetic brush strokes conveyed emotional meanings rather than pictorial accuracy. Often the eyes of his subjects stand out as in Taos Bison. The glint in his eye reveals that the majestic animal is returning the gaze of the viewer.
Kent Monkman (Fisher River Cree Nation), says, “My mission is to authorize Indigenous experience in the canon of art history that has heretofore erased us from view.”
Albert Bierstadt painted Cho-looke, the Yosemite Fall in 1864, a romanticized landscape supporting the idea of Manifest Destiny—that the movement west and its settlement by European immigrants was divinely ordained. In the lower right corner, a group of white settlers set up camp. Monkman’s The Fourth World,2012, enlarges the Bierstadt landscape and replaces the settlers with blond white men in camouflage, brandishing rifles and herding bison into what we may assume is the safety of the valley between the curved steel walls of a Richard Serra sculpture. Their rifles, however, suggest that they may be on a different mission.
Kent Monkman (Fisher River Cree Nation), The Fourth World, 2012. Denver Art Museum: Gift from Vicki and Kent Logan to the Collection of Denver Art Museum, 2014.224. © Kent Monkman. Photograph courtesy of the Denver Art Museum.
The museum’s executive director, Steve Seamons, observes, “As we mark the 250th anniversary of our nation and the 10th anniversary of the bison’s designation as our national mammal, there is no more fitting moment to reflect on what this iconic creature has meant to the land and its people across centuries.” —
Bison-tennial: From Colonization to Rematriation
Through August 23, 2026
National Museum of Wildlife Art
2820 Rungius Road, Jackson Hole, WY 83001
(307) 733-5771, www.wildlifeart.org
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