blazing streaks of sun setting over water

Chiura Obata, Setting Sun on Sacramento Valley, California (detail), 1930. Color woodcut, 15 5/8 x 10 15/16 in. (39.7 x 27.7 cm) (image). Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, Achenbach Foundation for Graphic Arts, 1963.30.3126.30 

Wild West: Plains to the Pacific

Mined from the wide-ranging collections of the Fine Arts Museums, Wild West explores artistic responses to the natural and cultivated landscapes of the western United States from the frontier era to the present. The exhibition features paintings, sculptures, prints, drawings, photographs, historical artifacts, and ephemera in a thematic presentation that celebrates the abundance and diversity within the region’s physical environment. This is a companion exhibition to Ed Ruscha and the Great American West.

The American frontier has long existed in the popular imagination as a land of unlimited promise and potential. As the landscape has been reshaped throughout history by prospectors, loggers, farmers, and urban developers, generations of artists have also invented and re-envisioned it in their works to fit the preoccupations of their times. Images of the land’s exploitation contrast with those that document the natural beauty and unique geological features of the region, including depictions of the Western national parks.

Included in Wild West are works by Albert Bierstadt, Maynard Dixon, Ester Hernández, Thomas Moran, Eadweard Muybridge, Chiura Obata, Bill Owens, Frederic Remington, Ed Ruscha, Fritz Scholder, Michael Schwab, Wayne Thiebaud, Carleton Watkins, Emmi Whitehorse, and other artists, whose diverse range of approaches to the theme contribute to a multifaceted picture of the American West.

blazing streaks of sun setting over water

Sponsors

This exhibition is organized by the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco.

Benefactor’s Circle

Mr. and Mrs. Charles Crocker

Currently on view