Booth Western Art Museum
Large contemporary Western paintings and sculpture, presidential letters, Indigenous works, Civil War art, and temporary exhibitions reveal how national myths travel far from the places they depict.
Artwork inspired by Jasper Johns
The Booth is compelling because it treats Western art as a living argument rather than a sealed historical genre. Contemporary paintings, sculpture, Indigenous works, Civil War imagery, and presidential letters present competing ideas about land, settlement, labor, violence, identity, and national mythology from a museum far beyond the landscapes depicted.
Follow a recurring symbol—a horse, horizon, firearm, or flag—through several artists, asking whose viewpoint and authority each work makes visible. Read the presidential documents as primary sources rather than decorative complements, and place recent work beside inherited frontier conventions. The extensive galleries reward selective looking, while the sculpture courts offer a useful visual reset between large painted narratives.
- contemporary Western gallery
- Contemporary Western perspectives
- presidential letters
- Presidential primary sources
- Sagebrush Ranch children’s gallery
- Hands-on family gallery
Quick guide
- Avoid the stereotype
- The collection is strongest when historical myth and contemporary response share the frame.
- Useful pause
- Outdoor sculpture courts reset your eyes before another large painting gallery.
Challenge the inherited West
- Track one symbol
- Follow a horse, horizon, firearm, or flag through three artists and note changing meanings.
- Center viewpoint
- Ask whose land, labor, violence, and authority each scene permits the viewer to see.
- Read the letters
- Use presidential documents as primary sources, not decoration beside the paintings.
- Include recent work
- Contemporary galleries complicate frontier nostalgia with living debates about identity, settlement, and ecology.
Good to know
Choose one recurring symbol—horse, horizon, firearm, or flag—and compare how three artists use it differently.
Notice these
- contemporary Western gallery
- presidential letters
- Sagebrush Ranch children’s gallery