Our itinerant traveler lives out his cowboy ways on the road
Silence saved for a gentle boot tap in time with the humming whisper of Mary Sharon Vaughn’s words made popular by highwaymen named Waylon and Willie. Strung upon tall Georgia pines are memories of my six cousins settled in for The Wizard Of Oz in a living room after Thanksgiving while I, cap guns holstered by my hips, sneak upstairs alone to watch Butch Cassidy And The Sundance Kid on a small black and white TV. Maybe it’s my imagination scattered across tranquil farmland shouldering Route 411, but at the age of eight I felt like an outlaw.
The Booth Western Art Museum resides next to railroad tracks that cut through the center of Cartersville, a small town 70 miles south of the Tennessee line. At 120,000 square feet, constructed of Bulgarian limestone and resembling a modern-day pueblo, the Booth is the largest permanent exhibition space for Western art in the world.
Over 2,000 pieces—paintings, sculptures, vintage movie posters, manuscripts and artifacts blending historical works with contemporary—are housed within the museum’s fifteen galleries. A Smithsonian Institution affiliate, the Booth, which opened in 2003, is listed among “The South’s Best Museums” by Southern Living and was named the 2016 Reader’s Choice “Best Western Museum” in America by True West magazine.
“The number one question we get is: why would you build a Western art museum in the Southeastern part of the United States?” says Jim Dunham, Booth’s historian and Director of Special Projects.
“It has less to do with where we are—everything to do with how old you are. If you were raised like me, in the 1950s, the motion picture and television industry was dominated by Westerns. It didn’t matter where you lived. The founders that collected this art fell in love with the American frontier because of the TV and movies. Even though they lived in Cartersville, their house was filled with paintings of cowboys and Indians.”
James Friedewald, 76, is a retired Atlanta trial lawyer-turned-docent. Decked in crisp jeans, bolo-tie and handsome chocolate cowboy boots, he guides our group highlighting artists such as Charles M. Russell, Harry Jackson, and Frederic Remington.
Before moving into the Millar Presidential Gallery, where letters from every American president are on display, Friedewald pauses at “A Day’s Work Done” by Duane Bryers. “Doesn’t that just bring your blood pressure down?” he says. An old cowboy and horse sip water from a trough as the dust settles. “When I got through trying cases—and trying cases is open warfare—and all of a sudden the day’s over and that just feels really good,” Friedewald tells me. “Yeah, it’s a really relaxing piece of art.”
The Booth’s myriad galleries include: Modern West, a wing dedicated to contemporary art; War is Hell which chronicles the Civil War; Sagebrush Ranch, an interactive children’s gallery; and Native Hands, a collection of American Indian artifacts.
“If there is a single overriding comment that you can make about Western art—it’s storytelling art,” Dunham says. “We divided the galleries on how the stories are told. We have one gallery called Colliding Cultures that deals with the treatment of African Americans, American Indians, Hispanics, Chinese. It’s an interesting gallery because it has so many paintings and sculptures that deal with this subject of Western movement to Western expansion which could be very violent and produce conflict.”
Last year, the Booth debuted WARHOL and the WEST, the first exhibition to fully explore Andy Warhol’s love of the wild frontier. Before his death, Warhol completed Cowboys and Indians which included fourteen iconic Western subjects, among them, Custer, Geronimo and John Wayne. The exhibition marked the first time the collection had been presented in full context and featured more than one hundred works of art and objects—including Warhol’s cowboy boots.
“Andy was a mirror to America,” says Seth Hopkins, Executive Director of the Booth. “If you were truly going to reflect America, the West was going to have to be in there. It’s not unnatural that he should have investigated the West. He kept a scrapbook of movie stars. The largest photograph in that portfolio was of Roy Rogers.”
Through February, the Picturing America Gallery showcases the photographs of Bill Wittliff who chronicled (and wrote the screenplay for) the Lonesome Dove miniseries based on the novel by Larry McMurtry. I’m staring at a photo of Robert Duvall in weathered boots, wry smile. In my memories and imagination, I can hear Augustus McCrae say, “If I’d have wanted civilization I’d have stayed in Tennessee and wrote poetry for a living.”
Jason Tinney co-authored the play Girl With Diamonds In Her Eyes: A Cowgirl Western with Holly Morse-Ellington and has been known to play cowboy harmonica with singer/songwriter Eric Shelton. He is typically attired in jeans, Western snap-shirts, and cowboys boots.