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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
Art Helps Reconciliation efforts at Fort Lewis College
Reconciliation. A coming together. An understanding. An apology. Reconciliation with and for Indigenous communities in the United States aims to address the historical and ongoing legacy and impacts of U.S. settler colonialism on Indigenous communities, repair relationships between Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples, and foster healing for Indigenous communities. Reconciliation at Fort Lewis College in Durango, CO is a...
Visiting San Antonio's World Heritage Center
San Antonio celebrated 10 years of World Heritage Site designation for its five Spanish missions by opening a World Heritage Center in February of 2025. The project was a collaboration between the city and the mission-descended community. The Center does not attempt to recreate the missions – they still exist – its purpose is distilling their character in a contemporary way, introducing visitors to what will be experienced on site at the missions, and acting as a gathering and celebration space for the local residents. Admission is free. San Antonio’s missions continue being used by residents as churches to this...
Anschutz Collection Provides a Double View into the Past
Visiting Denver’s American Museum of Western Art – The Anschutz Collection, is to see Western art and the West the way both used to be seen: narrowly. The personal art collection Denver-based billionaire Phillip F. Anschutz (b. 1939) amassed between the 1960s and early 2000s presents a mindset of collecting as much as individual artworks. A museum of an idea of Western art. Among the hundreds of paintings over three floors hung cheek to jowl salon style, I counted one by a Native American artist, a classic Fritz Scholder portrait depicting an obscured Native figure with an American flag draped...
Exhibition Examines Influence of Western Art on Western Movies
Fort Worth’s Sid Richardson Museum, specializing in the artwork of Charles Russell (1864–1926) and Frederic Remington (1861-1909), presents “The Cinematic West: The Art That Made The Movies,” an exhibit examining the influence of these two most famed Western artists on the silent film era and the early mid-century Golden Age of Western cinema. The “Cinematic West” explores the connection between Remington and Russell and the birth of Hollywood’s Western film genre demonstrating how their depictions of the American West—its landscapes, characters, and mythology—directly shaped early Western films' visual language and narrative conventions. The Museum’s access to one painting in particular...
Art Bridges and Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art Add Work by Contemporary Native Artists
A movement or a moment? That’s the nagging question – the doubt – lingering in the back of the head of advocates for contemporary Native American art. Is the genre’s recent mainstream attention a lasting movement or a fleeting moment? Since America’s social awakening to historic injustice in the aftermath of 2016’s Dakota Access Pipeline protests and George Floyd’s murder in 2020, contemporary Native American art’s profile has experienced a boom. Curators and museums looking to highlight stories of oppression and resistance found Native artists telling them in fresh and insightful ways. Contemporary Native artists are being featured in group...
Cowboy Boots, the Iconic Expression of Western Wear
Cowboy boots No matter your age. No matter your race. No matter your gender. No matter what part of the world you live in. No matter if you’re working a full day sweating under a hot sun or walking a red carpet. Cowboys boots are cool. Always have been. Country music superstars are synonymous with cowboy boots from Roy Rogers and Hank Williams to George Strait and Garth Brooks. Patsy Cline to Taylor Swift. Rock stars wear them too. Bob Dylan, Tom Petty, Axl Rose. Of course, every famous movie or TV cowboy wore cowboy boots on screen and often...
Western Art Surprises Abound in 12th SITE SANTA FE International
The 12th SITE SANTA FE International isn’t a Western art exhibition, but it’s not not a Western art exhibition. That lineage runs too deep here. Too deep for International curator Cecilia Alemani, an Italian living in New York, to overlook. Thankfully. Among the city-wide presentation of artworks made by artists from India, and China, and Europe, are artworks made by living and historic artists from Santa Fe, throughout New Mexico, and across the West. In no way do they clash. Global and local needn’t be an either/or in Santa Fe, historically a place of international exchange going back to the...
Historic and Contemporary Western Native American Artists Added to Permanent Collection at SFMOMA
The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art has announced its acquisitions for the first half of 2025. Among the pieces entering SFMOMA’s permanent collection are a large number from western Native American artists. The additions continue encouraging trends of major American institutions uplifting Native artists, both mid-career contemporary Native artists working at the edge of the avant-garde as well as the elder and ancestor artists whose shoulders they stand on. Museums set the culture. Not the popular culture of any given moment in time. They aren’t – or shouldn’t be – swayed by the whims and tastes of the art...
Osage Artist Norman Akers Responds to Five Months in Philadelphia
Norman Akers (b. 1958; Wahzhazhi/Osage) completed the inaugural Edgar Heap of Birds Family Artist in Residence at the Tyler School of Art and Architecture at Temple University in Philadelphia at the end of May. Akers put aside his job as a professor of painting in the Department of Visual Art at the University of Kansas, and starting on January 2, 2025, focused exclusively on his own painting. It was a rare opportunity. Most working artists work other jobs to help make ends meet. They’re teachers, gallery assistants, art handlers. They often balance this with kids and families, leaving available time...
Mary Sully Brought Out of the Shadows by First Solo Exhibition
With contemporary Native American art becoming more mainstream each passing day, America’s art museums – who’ve led this movement – are digging deeper. Having helped “break” living Native American artists like Jeffrey Gibson, Virgil Ortiz, and Cara Romero – to name just three – leading institutions are now working to bring new voices to the conversation, introducing audiences to rising figures and overlooked historical artists. One such overlooked historical artist is Mary Sully (Yankton Dakota, 1896–1963) – born Susan Mabel Deloria on the Standing Rock Reservation in South Dakota. The little-known, reclusive artist was active between the 1920s and 1940s,...
Washoe Baskets Highlighted at Two Nevada Museums
Indigenous art supplies often come from the earth, not a store. Native American baskets are produced from grasses and shrubs and tree bark. Native American pottery literally originates from the earth, the ground. From clay. The Nevada Museum of Art explores the inseparable connection between maker and material with “Of the Earth,” highlighting how art, cultural legacy, and environmental awareness converge in the production of Native American baskets and Pueblo pottery. The presentation marks the inaugural exhibition in a gallery space newly opened in March 2025. Also debuting are two transformative gifts to the museum’s permanent collection. The first is...