Western Museums Keep our Past Alive to Enjoy Today

Museums across the West are combining technology and rich artifacts to create innovative and immersive experiences for visitors who can explore such topics as ranching and rodeo, Native American lifestyle, and how the West has been portrayed in popular culture. The top museums in the West also have historic buildings and expansive collections of material about pioneers, outlaws, lawmen and the early settlers in the West.

- CANDY MOULTON

Buffalo Bill Center of the West

1 Western Spirit: Scottsdale's Museum of the West

(Scottsdale, AZ)

"A Decade of Western Spirit" reflects on the first decade of this museum that also highlighted the color of the West in "A Fistful of Colors" including art by Paul Pletka and George Phippen, jewelry by indigenous artists and a variety of styles from black-and-white photography to impressionist paintings and the Technicolor of classic films. The museum is expanding with new galleries and improved technology and will be offering a wider range of educational programming as well as its changing exhibits and signature permanent collection.

ScottsdaleMuseumWest.org

Western Spirit: Scottsdale's Museum of the West

2 Buffalo Bill Center of the West

(Cody, WY)

Three diverse exhibits this year appeal to a variety of interests. The special exhibitions included “The Guns of Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Performers” on display in the Cody Firearms Museum, “Pop Goes the West,” an exhibition in the Whitney Gallery of Western Art, shows the connections between popular culture and the American West, while “POP!-ular: The West's Original Pop Culture Icons” shows how icons like Buffalo Bill and Annie Oakley were portrayed in media and photographs during their own time. “Fire on the Mountain—Photographs of Wildland Fire Fighting” by Kyle Miller, was up during much of the summer. Miller, a hotshot firefighter, had 31 photographs he had taken of wildfires throughout the West On display. The exhibition highlighted the themes of fire ecology and the human element of wildland firefighting.

CenteroftheWest.org