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Learn about the latest Medicine Man Gallery happenings; all about our artist, see our educational videos about native American art and fine art, watch podcasts with your favorite artists and check out art and history-related links we think you'll enjoy.
Exploring Art, Literature, History, Museums, Lifestyle, and Cultures of the West
It amazes me that four letters - W-E-S-T - have the ability to evoke an instantaneous emotional image. Simply the act of reading these four letters has caused you to form a narrative of your west.
Can the West be distilled to its essence - a simple direction or region? I believe not; it is a deeper dive of consciousness. How America sees itself and the world defines us. Diverse cultures, strong individualism, open spaces, and raw natural beauty marinated in a roughshod history have formed this region’s unique milieu.
Our online magazine’s primary focus is to feature relevant topics in art, literature, history, museums, lifestyle, and culture; lofty goals for any publication. No single magazine can be the beckon of all things western; it is a diverse, evolving paradigm that cannot be pigeonholed. As the publisher, I hope to be the buffalo that grazes the wide expanse of western sensibility and relay to you a glimpse of how I perceive our Essential West.
- Mark Sublette
Featured Article
Portland Art Museum Opens Expansion with Focus on Northwest Art
The Portland Art Museum opened its $110-plus million Mark Rothko Pavilion to the public on November 20, 2025. The glass building provides a new main entrance for PAM, new terraces and display spaces, a new gift shop and café, and connects its two historic buildings. Portland Art Museum's Grand Gallery inside Mark Rothko Pavilion. Mark Rothko (1903-1970), icon...
Honoring the Navajo Code Talkers Through Portraiture
Elwyn Shorthair (b. 1988; Shiprock, New Mexico) has been painting portraits of Navajo Code Talkers since 2020. He picked up the project from James King who passed in 2019. King helped mentor Shorthair. The portraits are commissioned by Navajo YES, a nonprofit organization based on the Navajo Nation created to provide positive activities for youth and families, mostly outdoors, like hiking and mountain biking. In 2015, the group began a series of running events, the Navajo Parks Race Series; one such event was called Code Talker 10K. At that time, many of the famed Navajo Code Talkers were still alive....
Oscar Howe and the Origins of Contemporary Native American Painting
Oscar Howe was a radical in accountant’s clothing. An artistic revolutionary in a white, short-sleeved button-down dress shirt with pens in his pocket, thick black glasses, and a banker’s haircut. A square. One of his favorite hobbies was bowling. Looks can be deceiving. Oscar Howe (1915-1983; Yanktonai Dakota) painted some of the most radical pictures ever by a Native artist. Radical by 2020 standards, let alone for the 1950’s, 60’s, and 70’s when he was producing them. Frenzied motion. Horses bucking and buffalo galloping. Stylized Native figures. Strong. Spiritual. Howe mixed Cubism, Italian Futurism, geometry, precise lines, graphic arts, and...
Western Art: Is it or isn't it?
Is it, or isn’t it? Western art. My Fall 2025 travels have included the Amon Carter Museum of American Art in Fort Worth and the Saint Louis Art Museum. I’m always curious to see what “Western” artworks and artists are on display at non-Western specific art museums. With its foundational collection of C.M. Russell and Frederic Remington sculptures and paintings, the Amon Carter has one of the finest collections of Western art in the country, even though its focus expands to include American art broadly. At both institutions, I found myself especially intrigued by works occupying the edges of Western...
Gallup, NM's County Courthouse Doubles as an Art Museum
Are art and culture amenities in civic life like swimming pools and tennis courts? Or are they essential, like clean air and public transportation? The United Nations lists art and culture as universal human rights. In the aftermath of World War II, a complete collapse of humanity, the newly formed United Nations established the “Universal Declaration of Human Rights.” Article 27 states: “Everyone has the right freely to participate in the cultural life of the community, to enjoy the arts and to share in scientific advancement and its benefits.” Enjoyment of the arts as a human right. Art and culture...
The West and Western Art as Seen from the South and Far East
When looking at the West as a region, your location determines your view. Are you standing inside looking out or outside looking in? Are you looking west from “back east” across Texas, Oklahoma, and Kansas, or looking east from the (Far) East across California, Oregon and Washington When looking at the West, do you see Chinatowns or cattle drives? What about looking north to the West? Looking from Mexico. The Amon Carter Museum in Fort Worth presents a pair of fascinating exhibitions challenging how we imagine and “see” the West and Western art by considering the region from eastern and...
'Visualizing K’é’ with Marwin Begay at Wheelwright Museum
For Marwin Begaye (b. 1970; Navajo Nation) it starts with birds. Birds are the foundation of his art making. His connection and interest goes back to childhood. “When you herd sheep, there's nothing, but you, sheep, and the birds, and the clouds, and that curiosity,” Begaye said. Begaye’s curiosity in birds encouraged him to study their significance to Navajo culture later in life. He spoke to elders. He researched. He read. Anthropological reports from the Navajo Nation in the late 1800s and early 1900s continually referenced Hastíín Klah (1867-1937). In Navajo, “hastíín” means “mister;” “klah” refers to the left-handed. Hastíín...
Dyana Hesson's Native Plant Portraits Across Arizona
Plants have been a constant in Dyana Hesson’s (b. 1966) life. Long before she was a painter of plants, plants were a part of her family culture growing up in Northern California. The family had a garden. Hesson remembers her mother’s green thumb and her brother’s interest in botany developed in high school. That brother took a job at a nursery. In support, Hesson’s father built him a greenhouse. She remembers worm beds around the house. “All that came first, but I was always a creative kid so when it came time to decide what to paint – when I...
High-Tech Comes to Phoenix' Desert Botanical Garden in New Exhibition
Deserts are typically subtle, quiet, slow. They don’t rush and boom and soar with the power and obvious grandeur of waterfalls and mountains and forests leading to assumptions they’re baren, boring. Nothing could be further from the truth. People may well be divided into two categories: those who can “see” the desert and its splendor, and those who never give it a second glance. Artists “see” the desert. Maynard Dixon saw it. Georgia O’Keeffe saw it. Ed Mell saw it. The UK-based artist-led studio ScanLAB Projects is helping people see the desert for its subtle spectacle from October 11, 2025,...
Artists Then and Now Humanize California's Migrant Agricultural Workers
Scorned migrants from far away come to California’s agricultural fields looking for a better life. Not an easy life. Nothing easy about this work they perform in the sun, hunched over, on their feet. Endless hours of manual labor. A better life. In the 1930s, Dorothea Lange (1895–1965) photographed Okies blown in from the Great Plains by the Dust Bowl. Her iconic Migrant Mother (1936) photograph of the era, of the people, of the plight, may be the most recognized picture in American history. The weary, yet resolute woman. Her hungry children cling to her. The only safety and security...