Welcome to the American West!

Welcome to the American West!, in the John K. Goodman Pavilion of Western Art and the Count Ferdinand von Galen Gallery, showcases the Museum’s growing and varied collection of American West artwork spanning 200 years to the present. Many of these works are on public view for the first time.

The American West embodies diverse cultures, traditions, and histories that can be traced through many art forms. Artists’ representations from the early 19th-century and its age of exploration, through the 20th-century with cinema and television, have provided audiences with glimpses of qualities deemed authentically “Western.” From traditional Native American arts such as pottery and woven textiles, to painting and sculpture, artists continue to discover and interpret the rich themes of the American West.

This selection features artworks from Native American artists including Maria Poveka Martinez, Emmi Whitehorse, and Fritz Scholder; late 19th- and early 20th- century American West painters Charles Marion Russell, Rudolf Cronau, and Maynard Dixon; and contemporary Western artists Howard Post, Ed Mell, and Bill Schenck. 

The John K. Goodman Pavilion of Western Art occupies the Edward Nye Fish House, a nine-room historic adobe home built in 1868, that is a permanent landmark of historic Tucson architecture and part of the Museum four-acre historic block. Also in the historic block is the Duane Bryers Studio Re-creation, an installation in one room of the historic adobe Stevens House.

Credit: Exhibition overview from museum website