Continuing
The fascinating portraits of Lakota (Sioux) people by photographer Gertrude Käsebier tell a story of American history complex, beautiful and tragic in its scope. When Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show traveled to New York in 1898, Käsebier watched the Native American people sentimentally paraded as artifacts of a disappearing American frontier and Native American way of life. Käsebier invited the Lakota into her Fifth Avenue studio and captured some of the most compelling pieces of her already impressive body of work. More than a century later, Gilcrease Museum introduces us to Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Warriors, an exhibit of more than 40 original platinum and gum-bichromate photographs from the collections of the Smithsonian and the Buffalo Bill Historical Center in Cody, Wyo. This exhibition not only demonstrates the artist’s technical capacity for photography but an ability to reveal the inner lives of her subjects, and in these, we witness strength of identity despite an uncertain future. The exhibit runs through Jan. 26 at Gilcrease, 1400 N. Gilcrease Road. For details, hours and admission, visit www.gilcrease.utulsa.edu.
