Northcutt Steele Gallery
Elizabeth Guheen Discusses the Barstow Collection of Crow and Gros Ventre Ledger Drawings Northcutt Steele Gallery
Tuesday, October 14, 10:30am
Elizabeth Guheen, Director and Chief Curator of the Charles M. Bair Family Museum
will present a gallery talk on the Barstow Collection of Crow and Gros Ventre Ledger
Drawings, which is currently on display in the Department of Art's Northcutt Steele
Gallery tomorrow, Oct. 14 at 10.30am.
From 1879 through 1897, Crow and Gros Ventre peoples who had been confined at the
Crow Agency received drawing materials from clerks, teachers, agents, and army officers
and created drawings—often on ledger papers—documenting their experiences. Major Charles
H. Barstow, chief clerk for the Bureau of Indian Affairs, was one of the individuals
who supported the efforts of the Native Peoples to record their stories and he collected
many of these drawings which are now part of Special Collections, MSUB Library.
The exhibition Lives Between the Lines presents a selection of drawings from the Barstow Collection, which offer a poignant
visual history of the Crow and Gros Ventre during the last decades of the nineteenth
century and a glimpse of an artistic legacy of vast cultural significance.
Elizabeth Guheen is an expert on the Collection and will be sharing her insights
in the gallery. Guheen studied art and art history at the University of California
at San Diego and is a painter, writer and curator. She was the President of the Ucross
Foundation for the Arts and Literature in Wyoming for 16 years, and later served as
the Senior Curator of the Yellowstone Art Museum and the Roswell Museum of Art in
New Mexico. Guheen was a recipient of the Helena Rubenstein Fellowship in Art History
and Museum Studies from the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, and was awarded
the the Wyoming Governor's Award in the Arts for Arts Leadership in 1997. She is serving
her second term on Montana’s Cultural and Aesthetic Project Grants Committee.
The Northcutt Steele Gallery is located on the first floor of the Liberal Arts Building on
the Montana State University Billings campus. The gallery is open Monday – Friday
from 8:00am – 4:00 pm, and by appointment. For more information visit www.facebook.com/northcuttsteelegallery.
For additional information contact Leanne Gilbertson, Director of Northcutt Steele
Gallery, leanne.gilbertson@msubillings.edu; (406) 657-2903.
Image above: Gros Ventre, Drawing of Gros Ventre Women at a Dance, 1883, commercial pigments and ink on paper, 7 5/8 x 9 5/8 in.
