The American West is an expansive region with countless untold stories. However, traditional forms of media have primarily focused on narratives centered around individuals of European descent. The Smithsonian American Art Museum is challenging this limited perspective with the exhibition “Many Wests: Artists Shape an American Idea.” This groundbreaking event is a collaboration with four regional museums located west of the Rockies.
“Many Wests” showcases the work of 48 modern and contemporary artists, who predominantly identify as Asian American, Black, Indigenous, LGBTQ+, or Latinx. The exhibition includes a wide range of artistic mediums, such as paintings, photographs, prints, sculptures, and videos. While some works adhere to traditional modes, others take a more conceptual approach.
Two standout pieces at opposite ends of the exhibition highlight the diversity of artistic expression. Angel Rodríguez-Díaz’s “The Protagonist of an Endless Story” is a bold and empowering painted portrait of Chicana novelist Sandra Cisneros set against a vibrant red sky. In contrast, Raphael Montañez Ortiz presents “Cowboy and ‘Indian’ Film,” a disruptive piece created by re-editing director Anthony Mann’s 1950 Western, “Winchester ’73.” Montañez Ortiz reassembled the film using a tomahawk and performed a ritual influenced by his Yaqui Indigenous heritage.
Notably, the exhibition purposefully avoids the representation of 19th-century European American settlers, with a few exceptions. One striking inclusion is Angela Ellsworth’s work, which features pioneer women’s bonnets adorned with pins to symbolize Joseph Smith’s 35 wives. Ellsworth, a multidisciplinary queer feminist artist and fifth-generation Mormon, brings attention to an often overlooked aspect of history.
The majority of artists featured in “Many Wests” are contemporary, with only a few who began their careers in the first half of the 20th century. Jacob Lawrence, a renowned artist familiar to Washington museum-goers, contributes “The Builders,” one of his many depictions of African American laborers. Another lesser-known artist, Awa Tsireh (also known as Alfonso Roybal) from New Mexico, presents precise pen or pencil drawings augmented by watercolor, which uniquely capture Pueblo ceremonies and designs.
Several artists have a longstanding relationship with the Smithsonian American Art Museum. Hung Liu, a Chinese American artist, painted a portrait of Polly Bemis, a prominent Chinese-born Idaho business executive. Liu herself was the subject of a recent retrospective at the museum. Ken Gonzales-Day digitally alters historical photographs of vigilante violence, removing the bodies of Native American, Asian American, and Latinx victims. Some of Gonzales-Day’s works were previously exhibited at the National Portrait Gallery.
Additionally, the exhibition features photographs from Marcos Ramírez Erre and David Taylor’s “Delimitations Portfolio,” documenting the U.S.-Mexico border established by an 1819 treaty and later erased by the Mexican American War. This project was previously showcased at D.C.’s Mexican Cultural Institute.
One captivating preview at the exhibition is artist Wendy Red Star’s photographs, which playfully satirize natural history museums. Red Star portrays herself in various seasonal settings, resembling museum dioramas. However, upon closer inspection, the scenes reveal subtle details like plastic flowers and inflatable animals that expose their artifice. Red Star is one of six artists selected to create alternative monuments for the upcoming “Beyond Granite: Pulling Together” installation on the National Mall.
Of the 48 artists featured, four are Japanese American, and while two employ traditional East Asian styles, all but one address aspects of World War II. Wendy Maruyama and Roger Shimomura focus on the incarceration of Japanese Americans in U.S. internment camps. Maruyama creates a massive hanging sculpture of paper name tags representing internees, while Shimomura paints a large-scale scene reminiscent of a 15th-century Japanese painted screen, with the ominous silhouette of an American soldier overlooking the prisoners. Patrick Nagatani, born just days after the U.S. atomic bombings of Japan, explores the specter of nuclear war through his photographs of test sites, uranium mines, and military installations.
“Many Wests” is the result of the Art Bridges Initiative by SAAM and is organized by Anne Hyland and E. Carmen Ramos from the museum, along with Amy Chaloupka from the Whatcom Museum, Melanie Fales from the Boise Art Museum, Whitney Tassie from the Utah Museum of Fine Arts, and Danielle Knapp from the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art at the University of Oregon.
Experience the diversity and richness of the American West through “Many Wests: Artists Shape an American Idea” at the Smithsonian American Art Museum located on Eighth and F Streets NW. For more information, visit americanart.si.edu.
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