There’s a fascinating new art display opening on the 22nd at the Booth Western Art Museum in Cartersville, Georgia. Over 60 paintings and sculptures will portray the part played by those of color in the American West. Following is an excerpt from an article by Errin Haines in the March 13, 2009 edition of the San Francisco Chronicle.
There’s mountain man Jim Beckwourth, legendary lawman Bass Reeves and Henry O. Flipper, the first black graduate of West Point.
Here, too, is the slave-turned-explorer, York. And Stagecoach Mary, the cussing, gun-toting driver who delivered mail in Montana into her 70s. And Cathay Williams, who fought as William Cathay in the Army for two years before she was discovered to be a woman.
Now, these black figures and their contemporaries — who date back to the Civil War, but were excluded from the American West narrative — are honored in more than 60 paintings and sculptures at the Booth Western Art Museum. The exhibit, called “The Black West: Buffalo Soldiers, Black Cowboys and Untold Stories,” runs through March 22.
Seth Hopkins, executive director of the museum and co-curator of the exhibit, said the show attempts to honor black life on the frontier.