Oklahoma City, OK
National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum, October 2-January 3
Tucker Smith, The Refuge, 1994, oil, 36 x 120. JKM Collection, National Museum of Wildlife Art. © 1994 courtesy of The Greenwich Workshop.
This story was featured in the October 2020 issue of Southwest Art magazine. Get the Southwest Art October 2020 print issue or digital download now–then subscribe to Southwest Art and never miss another story.
THIS SUMMER, the National Museum of Wildlife Art in Jackson, WY, unveiled a major retrospective exhibition featuring the works of widely respected wildlife artist Tucker Smith. The exhibition travels to four more museums through early 2022, beginning with the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City, OK, where it stops for a three-month sojourn starting on Friday, October 2. In “true retrospective fashion,” the collection of more than 75 original oil paintings spans Smith’s early years as a professional artist in the 1970s and leads up to present-day works, says Michael Grauer, McCasland Chair of Cowboy Culture and Curator of Cowboy Collections & Western Art at the Oklahoma museum.
The expansive showcase, entitled A Celebration of Nature, takes viewers on a visual and highly sensory tour of the West’s wildlife, its monumental landscapes, and the cowboys who know the land intimately. Smith’s own knowledge of his subjects runs deep: He grew up in Pinedale, WY, not far from where he resides today on the Hoback Rim along Wyoming’s Wind River Mountains. “A true westerner,” says Grauer, the artist has canoed the region’s rivers, camped upon its land, and traversed its green valleys and craggy peaks on horseback. Such experiences in nature represent, for Smith, a spiritual communion that translates in his art with profound authenticity, notes Grauer. In a Tucker Smith painting, he explains, “You can smell the sagebrush, you can hear the aspens and feel the cold. You can go there through his paintings, and that’s what great art is—a transportation device.”
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- Tucker Smith, Box R Pack String, 1989, oil. Collection of Joffa and Bill Kerr.
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- Tucker Smith, East Fork Rams, 2011, oil, 24 x 32. Collection of Jerry and Viesia Kirk.
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- Tucker Smith, While the Sun Shines, 1996, oil. Private Collection.
The exhibition’s signature piece, THE REFUGE (1994), spans 10 feet in length, offering a panoramic, immersive view of a snow-covered valley dotted with dozens of elk. Numerous other pieces depict pure landscapes, ranchers, camp scenes, and pack trips, although the show’s emphasis on wildlife works reveals Smith’s deepest focus throughout his career. Among these pieces, says Grauer, one sees “touches” of early painters like Carl Rungius, W. Herbert Dunton, and Philip R. Goodwin. “There’s a deference for those who came before him,” he says of Smith, whose honors include the Prix de West Purchase Award and the Thomas Moran Memorial Award from the Autry Museum’s Masters of the American West show. Adds Grauer of the contemporary master, “Tucker is part of an art-historical continuum that many aspire to be part of but [few] achieve.” —Kim Agricola
contact information
405.478.2250
www.nationalcowboymuseum.org
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- Tucker Smith, Moose Falls, Yellowstone National Park, 2014, oil, 32 x 40. Purchased with additional funding generously provided by the Friends of Jean and Tucker Smith, National Museum of Wildlife Art.
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- Tucker Smith, The Boys of Summer, 2018, oil, 32 x 40. Buffalo Bill Center of the West, Cody, WY, museum purchase in honor of Margaret Webster “Maggie” Scarlett, with thanks for her many years of service as Chair of the Whitney Western Art Museum Advisory Board.
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- Tucker Smith, Wyoming Range, 2002, oil. Private Collection, courtesy of Gerald Peters Gallery, Santa Fe, New Mexico.
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- Tucker Smith, Wyoming Sky, 2008, oil. Autry Museum of the American West, Los Angeles.
This story was featured in the October 2020 issue of Southwest Art magazine. Get the Southwest Art October 2020 print issue or digital download now–then subscribe to Southwest Art and never miss another story.
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