Gallery Events And News
- Featured Artists
- Event Calendar
- Artist Biographies
- News & Press
- Educational Videos
- Podcast
- Essential West
- Learn
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.
Essential West Magazine
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
Mother and Daughter Nora and Eliza Naranjo Morse in Creative Harmony
Nora Naranjo Morse (b. 1953) and her daughter Eliza (b. 1980) have been collaborating as artists since the younger could walk, talk, and hold a pencil. “Eliza was four and I was traveling through Denmark and Germany, and I remember playing ‘Pass It’ with her,” Nora Naranjo Morse recalls. “It was basically a piece of paper and pencil....
'Migrant Mother' and more, Dorothea Lange photographs at Eiteljorg Museum
Dorothea Lange, Resettlement Administration photographer, in California, 1936. Farm Security Administration-Office of War Information Photograph Collection (Library of Congress) Consider it the Mona Lisa of photography. Perhaps not the greatest picture ever taken – although undeniably powerful – but the most recognizable. Dorothea Lange’s Migrant Mother has appeared in countless textbooks and on a U.S. postage stamp. No one recalls where they first saw the picture, it seems programmed into the factory settings of the American mental image vault. Taken in 1936 at a migrant-worker camp in Nipomo, CA, the image distilled human suffering on a national scale...
Après-ski with art in Breckenridge, CO
Exterior of Portfolio Gallery in Breckenridge, CO | Photo by Chadd Scott The Breckenridge, CO gallery scene has yet to recover from the closure of Breckenridge Fine Art in 2016. Owner Jim Tylich had galleries throughout the mountain towns across the West for decades before consolidating the business into a non-descript industrial plaza in Edwards, CO serving mostly existing collectors on an appointment basis. Breckenridge Fine Art gallery was the spark which lit my passion for art. Immediately upon entering, despite having zero background in art, I knew something was different. The paintings better, somehow – that was...
Second Annual Mvskoke Art Market Taking Place in Tulsa April 22-23
George Alexander (Mvskoke) standing next to his piece ‘Don't Call My Name’ at the 2022 Mvskoke Art Market | Photo Credit Darren DeLaune, Muscogee (Creek) Nation Office of Communications. The second annual Mvskoke Art Market takes place April 22 and 23 at the River Spirit Casino Resort in Tulsa, Oklahoma. “Mvskoke” is the traditional spelling of Muscogee, both are pronounced the same. The event opens at 10AM each day running through 5PM with free admission. Eighty-two Native American artists will be featured, up from 60 a year ago, selected from more than 100 applicants. Enrollment in a federally...
'California Stars' on view at Wheelwright Museum in Santa Fe
James Luna (Luiseño, Puyukitchum, Ipai, and Mexican; 1950–2018) used his body in performances, installations, and photographs to question the fetishization, museological display, and commodification of Native Americans. Luna’s Take a Picture with a Real Indian, first presented at the Whitney Museum of American Art in 1991, was his most interactive work. Individuals originally posed with Luna himself or with three life-size cutouts of the artist, two wearing varieties of traditional Native dress and the third in chinos and a polo shirt. Luna reprised the performance artwork in 2001 in Salina, Kansas, and in 2010 on Indigenous Peoples’ Day, formerly...
Kim Wiggins' western vision stands out at Briscoe Museum in San Antonio
Once you see a Kim Wiggins (b. 1959/1960; Roswell, N.M.) painting, you’ll never mistake one for anyone else. Their radiating lines and near iridescent colors recall tropical bird wings. His pictures tell Western stories in a relatable, representational, graphic style. Four Wiggins paintings on view at the Briscoe Western Art Museum highlighted my March 2023 visit to San Antonio; I will focus on three of them. Kim Wiggins, Fiesta Day on the Plaza, 2003. Oil on canvas. Briscoe Museum of Western Art Fiesta Day on the Plaza (2003) Wiggins’ vision of a bustling Santa Fe Plaza...
Isabella Stewart Gardner's unsettling photographs from 19th Century New Mexico
What do your travels say about you? What about your travel albums? Remember those? Physical scrap books produced following trips in the days before everyone possessed hundreds of photos of even the most mundane experiences on their phones. Both reveal a great deal about Isabella Stewart Gardner (1840–1924), namesake of the Boston art museum converted from her one-time mansion. The simple legacy is what her travels tell us. Between 1867 and 1895, Gardner and her husband traveled the world extensively. Both were born into fabulous wealth and privilege. Though this status enabled them to freely cross countries and...
Step into the ring with luchadores at Arizona State University Art Museum
Installation view of “Lucha Libre: Beyond the Arenas,” October 2022–May 2023, Arizona State University Art Museum. Photo by Tim Trumble Performance, photography, paintings, prints, fashion, costume design, video. An exhibition at the Arizona State University Art Museum in Tempe has everything you’d expect from a thoughtfully researched, multi-media art exhibition with this unique differentiator: the backdrop is lucha libre, professional wrestling in Mexico. “Lucha Libra: Beyond the Arenas,” the first exhibition of its kind, goes beyond the performance sport’s popularity in contemporary culture to reveal its ancient roots, explore its influence on socio-political movements and link its relationships...
"The Land Carries Our Ancestors: Contemporary Art by Native Americans" at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.
G. Peter Jemison (Seneca Nation of Indians, Heron Clan), Sentinels (Large Yellow), 2006 | Courtesy National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. The National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. has failed to represent its nation since industrialist Andrew W. Mellon gifted his art collection to the nation for the purposes of creating a world class museum on par with those in Europe in 1937. America’s art museum was mostly just a European art museum on American soil. Make no mistake, the collection was, and is, exquisite. Raphael’s The Alba Madonna (1510). Important, sublime paintings by Monet and Cezanne....
Faye HeavyShield's Indigenous Minimalism at the Pulitzer Arts Foundation
Faye HeavyShield 'I'll know you when I see you' | Courtesy of the Pulitzer Arts Foundation The art world has no walls. No floor. No ceiling. No matter which direction you travel in for however long you look, you’ll never see it all. You can dedicate your life to art and still be surprised by what’s escaped you. “It was through just pure happenstance of coming across her work that the project developed,” Tamara Schenkenberg, Curator at the Pulitzer Art Foundation in St. Louis, remembers about seeing Faye HeavyShield’s artwork for the first time. While well known in...
'We Are Still Here' Pomo Artists at Sonoma Valley Museum of Art
Meyo Marrufo with one of her dress designs at exhibition opening for We Are Still Here Pomo Artists and Our Cultural Landscape at the Sonoma Valley Museum of Art Most of my writing centers on what I already know. I highlight artists I like who I want to see receive more attention and look for timely reasons to share histories familiar to me I want to broaden understanding of. Occasionally, as with this story, I enter with zero understanding. I enter with curiosity and the privilege of being able to ask my questions to people expert in the...