New View

Currently on show at The Cowboy, WIDEWEST takes a broader perspective of the American West

Written by Jenn Thornton

Thanks to John Wayne’s decades-long Hollywood career and the staggering catalog of films he left behind, the actor known far and wide as simply “The Duke” is synonymous with the mythical American cowboy. He left a cultural document so rich that for many fans across the world he remains the face of the rugged individualism rooted in the American West. But, like Wayne in real life, the region is a more compelling story with many chapters and characters. 

WIDEWEST, a new exhibit at the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum, takes on this multifaceted tale. “My biggest goal of this exhibition was to expand on the idea of who and what is in the West,” says curator Samantha Schafer, archivist II at the museum’s Dickinson Research Center. “So often, the West is synonymous with cowboys, but the reality is so much broader than just cowboys. In this exhibition, you can see cowboys and rodeo performers, but you can also see animal trainers, military personnel and forts, Indigenous people, businessmen, children, oil derricks, fashionable women, everyday citizens, and so much more.”

“My biggest goal of this exhibition was to expand on the idea of who and what is in the West.”

Curator Samantha Schafer

The exhibit uses panoramic photography to capture this fuller, more accurate representation of life in the contemporary American West, while at the same time calling attention to the unique methods of preserving these images. Just as film is a persuasive storytelling device, so too is photography, a medium with the power to both entertain and instruct. It is also “one that nearly everyone has experience with, both as the subject and as the photographer/artist,” says Schafer. “It’s accessible at nearly any level of skill or knowledge, and in this modern era many people carry around a camera in their pocket via a smartphone.”

Taken in that context, the audience for this exhibit is, like this show itself, wide. “I also think that photography gives us a glimpse into history at a much more personal level,” Schafer adds. “We’re often taught history on a grander scale, in terms of groups of people and eras rather than singular individuals in a specific moment. Photography captures those individuals in those moments, including individuals whose names and experiences have been lost to time.”Once lost, now found, the photographs in the exhibit run the gamut. The biggest image on display defines vast at nearly 5-feet long! All, however, are illustrative of the larger narrative expressed in WIDEWEST. These include a group shot of the Oklahoma State Pharmaceutical Association, taken at Fort Sill in Lawton, Oklahoma. “I chose this photograph for the exhibition because it expands and challenges the idea of who was in the West,” says Schafer. Another is of the cast and crew of a performance of the 101 Ranch Real Wild West Show from 1928. “Much like the other photograph, it expands on the idea of who was in the West, especially with the Indigenous and Black cast members sitting in the front row,” Schafer adds. As John Wayne fans well know, “The West is as much a story told by actors as it is a history, so these members of a Wild West show helped create an image of what the West is by the ‘spectacle’ they put on—whether or not that spectacle is historically accurate.” In this exhibit, viewers will find a more truthful story, but one that is equally deserving of an audience. WIDEWEST runs through Oct. 15, 2023.