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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
Hyper SoCal Photography Exhibition at Santa Barbara Botanic Garden
Hyper SoCal debuted in January 2026 as an effort to spotlight unexpected, under-the-radar arts spaces across five Southern California counties. Originating at Glendale’s Brand Library & Art Center, a historic institution known for its art and music collections and its longstanding support of emerging and established artists, Hyper SoCal extends that mission outward. The initiative unites a diverse...
Andy Warhol and the West
No artist is more associated with New York than Andy Warhol. The Factory. Studio 54. Celebrity culture. Still, Warhol was fascinated with the West. Seth Hopkins, Executive Director at the Booth Western Art Museum in Cartersville, GA first explored the connection in his master’s thesis. “I took every Warhol book we had in our library home over a weekend and by the time I had looked through them all, I realized there were more Western subjects than I would have thought, yet I couldn’t find much written about it,” Hopkins told me back in 2019. That was the year his...
Fritz Scholder Remembered at Sigler Western Museum
Fritz Scholder (1937-2005) wasn’t the first Native painter to work in a modern style. To fuse Modern art trends from Europe and New York with his Indigenous heritage. Oscar Howe (1915-1983; Yanktonai Dakota), who instructed Scholder as a high school student in Pierre, South Dakota, did so earlier. George Morrison (1919-2000; Grand Portage Chippewa) did so earlier. Others as well. Scholder, however, was the first artist to become a star for doing so. To enter the mainstream gallery, collector, and institutional worlds. As such, he’s often thought of as “first,” even though he wasn’t. Scholder’s off-the-charts charisma, his magnetism, his...
Cara Romero: Panûpünüwügai (Living Light)
Following its debut at the Hood Museum of Art at Dartmouth College in 2025 and subsequent presentation at the Phoenix Art Museum earlier this year, “Cara Romero: Panûpünüwügai (Living Light),” opened at the Museum of Contemporary Art Jacksonville on October 1 where I finally saw it. More than 50 large-scale photographs spanning the past 10-plus years examine Indigenous life through a contemporary lens, celebrating the multiplicity, beauty, and resilience of Native American and Indigenous experiences with a strong focus on women and the land. “Native people and our global Indigenous communities hold a sacred role in the health and future...
'ASCO: Without Permission' Documentary Premiering on PBS
Artists work best in community. Ask the Impressionist painters working in Paris. Or the Taos Society of Artists. Or New York’s Abstract Expressionists of the 40s. Artist Hopid, recently featured by “Essential West,” on the Hopi Reservation in the 1970s. Artists flourish in communities of artists. It’s why art colonies develop. Places like Taos and Provincetown, MA, and the East End of Long Island. It’s why art schools exist. The Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe. The Arts Students League in New York. The Pilchuck Glass Studio outside Seattle. Artists need other artists. The volume of prominent artist...
Maynard Dixon Illustrations Imagine the Oregon Trail
A 1941 commission to provide illustrations for a special edition re-release of the 1849 classic “The Oregon Trail” allowed Maynard Dixon (1875-1946) to do what he loved most. To return to the Old West. The West of Native nations. Of mountain men. Before the buffalo were shot out. Before the frontier was closed. Before the railroads. In his mind, anyway. He never actually saw the West that way. Francis Parkman’s (1823-1893) “The Oregon Trail” was based upon the author’s journey across the Great Plains in 1846. As a 23-year-old, he spent two months during the summer traveling through present-day Nebraska,...
Thomas Hart Benton's 'Picture of America in its Entirety'
A picture of America in its entirety. A ludicrous pursuit for any artist. So vast. So diverse. Constantly changing. Yet, that was Thomas Hart Benton’s (1889-1975) stated objective, and he came as close to achieving that goal as any recorder of the nation. “I was after a picture of America in its entirety...I ranged north and south and from New York to Hollywood and back and forth in legend and history,” Benton once said. The painter’s efforts toward “a picture of America in its entirety” can be seen now through October 16, 2026, at Schoelkopf Gallery in New York during...
Grizzly 399 Monument Unveiled at National Museum of Wildlife Art
Grizzly 399 was born in 1996. She successfully birthed 18 cubs in her lifetime including a rare four-cub litter during the COVID-19 pandemic. Her last cub was born when Grizzly 399 was 24, a record birthing age for the species. She represented more than numbers. Often seen with her cubs near roadsides across Grand Teton National Park and Bridger-Teton National Forest in Wyoming over decades, Grizzly 399 became a neighbor. A friend. A celebrity. “The Queen of the Tetons” as titled by a PBS documentary. She was photographed endlessly. Sculptor Jocelyn Russell in the Studio. Courtesy of the artist and...
Smith, Cannon, and Scholder Artworks Enter Prestigious Museum Collections
Museums are the ultimate arbiters of taste. The most exclusive velvet rope. The final boss. Museums are concerned with collecting for time immemorial, not of the moment. Trends and fads don’t interest them, that’s why they still collect antiquities with relish. Museums acquire artworks today as much for the 22nd century as the 21st. By definition, anything worthy of being owned by or displayed in a museum is “good.” Ownership and display in the nation’s most preeminent museums are reserved for “masterpieces.” The best of the best of the best from 5,000 years of human creativity. Jaune Quick-to-See Smith (Confederated...
Speed Art Museum Repatriates Objects to Southern Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes
On August 19, 2026, officials from the Speed Art Museum in Louisville, KY helped Chester Whiteman and Fred Mosqueda, representatives of the Southern Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes, carefully load sacred objects into their cars for the drive back to Oklahoma. The 24 items had been held by the Museum for nearly 100 years. They were finally returning to their rightful owners. This marked the Speed museum’s first return of sacred and cultural belongings to Native communities under the federal law known as NAGPRA – Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act. NAGPRA is a federal law requiring museums and other...