CALIFORNIA ON THE CANVAS AUTRY PAIRS ART, FINERY TO PAINT A PICTURE OF STATE'S EARLY DAYS.Byline: Jim Farber Staff Writer WHEN the Autry Western Heritage Museum opened in 1988, the highbrow high·brow adj. also high·browed Of, relating to, or being highly cultured or intellectual: They only attend highbrow events such as the ballet or the opera. n. art community of Los Angeles Los Angeles (lôs ăn`jələs, lŏs, ăn`jəlēz'), city (1990 pop. 3,485,398), seat of Los Angeles co., S Calif.; inc. 1850. resisted accepting the singing cowboy's museum as a serious institution. B-Westerns, they assumed, could at best produce a B-museum. Time has proven that attitude toward Gene Autry and his namesake institution dead wrong. During its nearly 20 years of operation, the Autry National Center The Autry National Center, is a western heritage center made up of three Museums and the Institute for the Education of the American West. Located in Griffith Park in the City of Los Angeles, California. , as it is now known, has continued to grow and prosper through intelligent additions to its curatorial and research staff, the creation of provocative exhibitions such as "Yosemite: Art of an American Icon," and a series of skillfully managed acquisitions and partnerships. The strategy first manifested in 2002, when the Autry acquired the Museum of Women of the West, based in Boulder, Colo. In 2003, the Autry joined forces with the Southwest Museum The Southwest Museum is a museum, library, and archive located in the Mt. Washington area of Los Angeles, California. Its collections deal mainly with the American Indian. of the American Indian American Indian or Native American or Amerindian or indigenous American Any member of the various aboriginal peoples of the Western Hemisphere, with the exception of the Eskimos (Inuit) and the Aleuts. , which was in decline but possessed one of the greatest collections of American Indian art and artifacts artifacts see specimen artifacts. in the world. Now the Autry has entered into a 99-year lending agreement Lending agreement A contract regarding funds transferred between a lender and a borrower. with the California Historical Society (founded in 1871), which represents one of the supreme repositories of paintings, sculpture, period costumes and photography related to the history of the state. "California Style: Art and Fashion From the California Historical Society," on display through May 27, serves to introduce the benefits of this new partnership. The exhibition combines 68 paintings and a collection of superbly restored period costumes to form a chronological portrait of the California lifestyle from 1870 to the 1920s. "We wanted to pair paintings with historic costumes as a way of focusing on what it meant to be a fashionable Californian in different decades," explained Carolyn Brucken, the Autry's assistant curator of Western women's history ''This article is about the history of women. For information on the field of historical study, see Gender history. Women's history is the history of female human beings. Rights and equality Women's rights refers to the social and human rights of women. . "We often think of people in California (as) dressed in buckskins buck·skin n. 1. a. The skin of a male deer. b. A soft, grayish-yellow leather usually having a suede finish, once made from deerskins but now generally made from sheepskins. 2. . But these people were shopping in Paris and New York City New York City: see New York, city. New York City City (pop., 2000: 8,008,278), southeastern New York, at the mouth of the Hudson River. The largest city in the U.S. at the same time they were buying nostalgic Old West paintings. We wanted to play with that idea, that these people had multiple identities as Westerners." The exhibition begins at a time when the residents of San Francisco San Francisco (săn frănsĭs`kō), city (1990 pop. 723,959), coextensive with San Francisco co., W Calif., on the tip of a peninsula between the Pacific Ocean and San Francisco Bay, which are connected by the strait known as the Golden are no longer a ragtag rag·tag adj. 1. Shaggy or unkempt; ragged. 2. Diverse and disorderly in appearance or composition: "They're a small ragtag army of racketeers, bandits, and murderers" gaggle of wild and woolly red-shirt '49ers. By 1870, Brucken points out, a new affluent upper class with names such as Crocker, Stanford, Hopkins and Huntington had established itself in the Bay Area. As the new society of the West, they wanted to display their refinement and taste for fine fashion, while displaying paintings in their parlors that solidified their role as the heirs of Manifest Destiny manifest destiny, belief held by many Americans in the 1840s that the United States was destined to expand across the continent, by force, as used against Native Americans, if necessary. . "It's a mixture of European and American influences that you'll see throughout the show," said Amy Scott Amy Scott is a VJ who hosts the weekday episodes of The Alternative on VH1 Classic. She was also a VJ on the original VH1 network from 1994 to 1996, and was asked onto VH1 Classic when it began to play videos from 1994 in 2004. , curator of visual arts. "It's also the period that represents the beginning of private art collecting in California by this newly wealthy class. And because people spent a lot more time entertaining, your art collection said a lot about who you were." The first gallery of the exhibition sets the scene by juxtaposing an exquisitely sewn and bejeweled be·jew·eled or be·jew·elled adj. Decorated with or as if with jewels. wedding dress (created for Mary Amelia Hale in 1881) facing painter William Keith's bucolic homage to the taming of the Western landscape, "Haying in Marin County." These two notions of West and East can be seen to fuse, said Brucken, in the creation of a plush red and black, velvet and satin evening dress from 1883. The dress is in the high style of the day, the type you might encounter on the streets of Boston or New York New York, state, United States New York, Middle Atlantic state of the United States. It is bordered by Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and the Atlantic Ocean (E), New Jersey and Pennsylvania (S), Lakes Erie and Ontario and the Canadian province of . But the large metal ornamental buttons that run down the bodice depict a distinctly Western scene of pines and mountains accentuated by a proud stag. In the 1870s and '80s, by far the most popular artist was William Keith. But there were many others, including the Marin County scene specialist Thaddeus Welch and the master of Yosemite, Albert Bierstadt, whose painting "On the Merced River (circa 1885) represents a luminous example. There's a pastoral scene of horses grazing on the slopes of rural Berkeley before the university, and cows munching contentedly on the slopes of Mount Tamalpias with the sea beyond. There's also a fine historical painting of sailing ships entering San Francisco Bay San Francisco Bay, 50 mi (80 km) long and from 3 to 13 mi (4.8–21 km) wide, W Calif.; entered through the Golden Gate, a strait between two peninsulas. long before a great bridge was conceived to span the Golden Gate. As the Autry nears its 20th year of operation, it's clear the organization is making the right choices. "California Style" is certainly a fine example of that, while providing a preview of even greater things to come. Jim Farber, (310) 540-5511, Ext. 416 jim.farber@dailybreeze.com Autry gets bigger to house Southwest collection The Autry plans an extensive expansion project in 2008 that will double the museum's exhibition space, with 20,000 square feet dedicated to showcasing the collection of American Indian art currently housed at the Southwest Museum of the American Indian on Mount Washington in Griffith Park. The construction will be overseen by Levin & Associates, the firm that recently completed the expansion of the nearby Griffith Observatory. The company will create a master plan for the Autry's 10-acre campus that will incorporate new buildings with existing facilities. The current parking facilities will be submerged, and glassed-in galleries will be built on the west- facing side of the museum. In addition, 30,000 square feet of underground storage will be created to house the remainder of the Southwest Museum's collection. Plans for the reuse of the old Mount Washington facility are being considered. Along with new gallery spaces, 50,000 square feet of new administrative space will be dedicated to the Institute for the Study of the American West, the Autry Library and the collections of the Braun Library, which are now housed at the Southwest Museum. New classrooms, seminar and symposium rooms, a visitor service center, and expansion of the museum's cafe and gift shop also are included in the plan. -- J.F. CALIFORNIA STYLE: ART AND FASHION FROM THE CALIFORNIA HISTORICAL SOCIETY Where: Museum of the American West, 4700 Western Heritage Way, Griffith Park, Los Angeles. When: 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday through Sunday; through May 27. Tickets: $9.50, $5 seniors and students, $3 children. (323) 667-2000 or autrynationalcenter.org. CAPTION(S): 4 photos, box Photo: (1 -- color) "Sunshine and Rain" (1916) by Maynard Dixon (2 -- color) "Snowstorm in the Sierra" (1876) by William Hahn (3 -- color) "On the Merced River" (circa 1885) by Albert Bierstadt (4 -- color) This evening dress, circa 1883, made of velvet and satin, features miniature wilderness scenes on the bodice's ornamental metal buttons. Box: Autry gets bigger to house Southwest collection (see text) |
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