City of Sioux City issued the following announcement on Nov. 6.
Beginning November 6, 2020, the Sioux City Art Center will host Magnetic West: The Enduring Allure of the American West, an exhibition showcasing nearly 130 photographs exploring the complicated history of America from the Mississippi River all the way to the Pacific Ocean.
The exhibition begins with a Western-themed virtual reception on Zoom, Thursday, November 5, 2020 at 6:00 pm. Participants will be entertained by local musician Mike Langley performing live Western music and Sioux City's resident mixologist Austin Foster demonstrating themed cocktail mixing. Finally, Art Center Curator Mary Anne Redding will lead the group in an exhibition tour and gallery talk, with opening remarks by Art Center Director Todd Behrens.
MAGNETIC WEST: The Enduring Allure of the American West is organized by the Figge Art Museum, Davenport, Iowa, and made possible by Constance Bosson Runge and Carolyn Levine and Leonard Kallio Trust. Curated by Figge Director of Collections and Exhibitions, Andrew Wallace, Assistant Curator, Vanessa Sage, and Vero Rose Smith, independent curator, it is the first photography exhibition of this scale and scope organized and presented by an Iowa museum. The Art Center is “honored to bring this important exhibition to Sioux City,” said Director Todd Behrens.
The first railroad bridge that connected the East to the West spanned the Mississippi River connecting Illinois to Davenport, Iowa, and bringing a steady stream of people and goods into unexplored territory. Before the mid-1850s when the bridge was completed, steamboats were the primary means of transportation on the Mississippi River for both passengers and possessions. Photography also reached the American West in the 1850s, becoming the primary way people in the East could see and come to know what wonders lay in the mythical West. Photographs, both through still and moving images, continue to frame the popular understanding of the American West.
The photographs in the exhibit touch on many aspects of Western life, demonstrating how the popular view of the West has evolved since the 19th century. In so many of the early photographs, the region West of the Mississippi was portrayed as the land of opportunity and a vast wilderness untouched by human hands. In the past 50 years many photographers have challenged the myth of the “West that Was,” expanding the understanding of the West as it is today and more accurately reflecting the nuanced racial, cultural, and environmental forces at play in the region’s evolution.
The exhibition includes photographs from the past one hundred and seventy years, with images by well-known photographers Ansel Adams, Robert Adams, Tseng Kwon Chi, Linda Connors, Terry Evans, Laura Gilpin, Zig Jackson, Mark Klett, Kathya Landeros, Star Montana, Timothy O’Sullivan, Wendy Red Star, Cara Romero, Edward Weston, and Will Wilson, among many others.
The exhibition is arranged by five interwoven themes: An American Eden, Theme and Variation, Identity and Experience, Going West, and Home on the Range. The Sioux City Art Center is partnering with the Sioux City Public Museum to contextualize the exhibit in the Sioux City region by adding a small selection of historic images from the photo archives that will be on display just outside the galleries.
Picturing the West as a metaphor for both promise and peril, the exhibition explores issues of cultural identity, the implications of living in a rapidly changing landscape, and the centrality of Native, Hispanic, immigrant and women’s voices as essential to understanding the complexity of the region.
A full color catalogue will be released in November 2020 featuring essays by the curators of the exhibition as well as renowned artist and poet Ray Young Bear, and art historian Andrew Kensett. The catalogue will be available after its release at the Figge Museum and the Sioux City Art Center.
Magnetic West will be on view at the Sioux City Art Center through January 17, 2021. Admission to this exhibition is FREE, with donations accepted. Magnetic West has been sponsored locally by the Blockbuster Partners
Original source can be found here.
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