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Read the West Book Club: Lady Long Rider: Alone Across America on Horseback

Riding 2,000 miles on horseback from Montana to New Mexico sounds like a crazy but thrilling dream— or pure hardship and exhaustion. According to Bernice Ende, the trip was all that and more. More than once she is traversed the Great Plains, the Southwest deserts, the Cascade Range and the Rocky Mountains. Lady Long Rider: …

Brown Bag Lunch Series: Tattooing: Religion, Reality and Regret

Tattooing is a custom dating back thousands of years in North America. Traditionally, women and men used them to visually express tribal affiliation and war honors, as well as connections to divine beings, maturity rites and social and religious affiliation. These expressions of identity continued with the person after death — ensuring their place in …

Brown Bag Lunch Series: A Brief Overview of Body Modification and Tattoos

All cultures practice some type of body modification, be it body painting, piercing, tattooing, scarring or re-shaping. In many cultures, body modification is done to indicate social position, family affiliation, marital status, identify with a particular ethnic or gender group, perform a rite of passage, ward off or invoke the spirits, or to transfer information. …

Date with the Duke: The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962)

When Senator Ransom Stoddard (James Stewart) returns home to Shinbone for the funeral of Tom Doniphon (John Wayne), he recounts to a local newspaper editor the story behind it all. He had come to town many years before, a lawyer by profession. The stage was robbed on its way in by the local ruffian, Liberty …

Brown Bag Lunch Series: Southeastern Tattoo Traditions

An Indigenous tattoo revival is in full swing all over the world. J.P. Johnson will discuss the importance of ceremonial tattoo traditions amongst tribal peoples of the Southeast but, more specifically, Cherokee tattooing and the reclaiming of Cherokee identity through ceremony. J.P. Johnson has worked with the Cherokee nation for 13 years teaching language and …

Read the West Book Club: Letters of a Woman Homesteader

This book is composed of letters written by a young woman who lost her husband in a railroad accident and went to Denver to seek support for herself and her two-year-old daughter. Turning her hand to the nearest work, she went out by the day as house-cleaner and laundress. Later, seeking to better herself, she …

Brown Bag Lunch Series: Inuit Traditional Skin Markings

Traditional Tattooer Holly Mititquq Nordlum discusses Inuit people, place, history, colonization, healing and wearing sacred markings in a modern context. Nordlum is one of a few women internationally bringing back Inuit markings to her people and working with the next generation. (Nordlum will speak via Zoom from Anchorage, Alaska.) Bring your lunch or purchase one …

Read the West Book Club: The Removed

Read the 2022 Western Heritage Award-winning Western novel The Removed by Brandon Hobson. In the 15 years since their teenage son, Ray-Ray, was killed in a police shooting, the Echota family has been suspended in private grief. The mother, Maria, increasingly struggles to manage the onset of Alzheimer’s in her husband, Ernest. Their adult daughter, …

Curator Conversations: Mother Roads

Explore the West by “taking the highway that is best” with Samantha Schafer and Nathan Jones, curators of the exhibition Mother Roads. Ride along on a trip that covers the Museum’s history along Route 66, the weird and wonderful world of roadside America and the ways we tour the West. $5; free for Museum members. …

Event Series Stitchin’ Good Time

Stitchin’ Good Time

Want to try embroidery but don’t know where to start? Join Darci Lenker for a two-night workshop learning and experimenting with different stiches to create your own embroidered piece! Classes will be held within the Western Wares exhibition where you will be inspired by fanciful embroidered embellishments. Perfect for beginners or those that enjoy a …

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