TAOS, N.Mex. — For many people, the cowboy is a symbol of freedom, independence and self-reliance rooted in Western expansion and white America. This image was perpetuated for over a century in Louis L’Amour novels, spaghetti westerns, Charles M. Russell paintings, Marlboro commercials, and mid-century TV weeklies like The Lone Ranger And Smoke. In fact, of the approximately 35,000 cowboys who worked in the west between 1866 and 1895, up to a quarter were African Americans, including those who were once enslaved and marched west. to earn a living after the civil war. Many others were Native Americans or Mexican vaqueros.
Outriders: Legacy of the Black Cowboy, at the Harwood Museum of Art in Taos, New Mexico, strives to correct the mainstream Western narrative of cowboys as white heroes on horseback, and show the deliberately rejected prevalence of black frontier men and women, according to Nikesha Breeze, a Taos-based multimedia artist, researcher, and member of the Riders Exhibition Committee. The committee includes regional experts in the fields of art, history, and cultural studies with knowledge of Black cowboy and cowgirl history and culture, including Black Cowboy Museum founder and owner Larry Callies , director of the African American Museum and Cultural Center of New Mexico Rita Powdrell and chair of the board of directors of the Black American West Museum & Heritage Center Daphne Rice-Allen, among others. For a museum that has rarely shown works by African American artists, forming this committee was integral to responsible storytelling and representation.
Part historical inquiry and part contemporary celebration of self-determination and independent fatherhood, Riders is divided into two sections that examine perceptions of black cowboys in reality, popular media, and the public imagination. Harwood Museum staff spent approximately two years researching historical photographs in archives, libraries and private collections across the country. These photos line a dimly lit hallway in a section of the museum built circa 1923. Many cowboys are anonymous, though some names are familiar figures from Western history, including characters from the film. The more they fall (2021).
The contemporary section of the exhibition is housed in a modern, light and airy main gallery, built in 2010. A short walk down a rear hallway connects the two spaces. This separation seems awkward, at first, but it’s a clever curatorial device – an intentional Wizard of Oz-style reveal. Visitors move from a sepia-toned past captured through a white documentary lens to a vibrant present created by black artists.
In the main gallery is a deliberately garish acrylic on caricature of a crouching sniper against a bright red sky. The aptly titled “Beyond the Horizon” (2021) by Alexander Harrison metaphorically announces: “We are no longer in Kansas”. This is a strong change from the historical section. Similarly, Harrison’s ironic “Portrait of an Artist in the Twilight of the Moon, Hoping for a Brighter Future” (2021) demonstrates that the perspective of subject and artist has shifted, becoming l occurrence one and the same.
Portraiture and photography remain major themes throughout the exhibition. Louange Fuller’s 2022 untitled triptych of self-portrait cyanotypes on fabric hangs loosely from the ceiling at the end of the gallery, their indigo imagery reminiscent of worn working-class denim. In the portraits, the artist crosses a desert landscape alone on horseback. These moments are seductive, intimate and serene, as if there were no photographer present.
Some contemporary pieces reflect history in subject and composition, prompting comparison. For example, Kennedi Carter’s photograph “Silas” (2020) is reminiscent of Doris Ulmann’s “African American with Two Horses” (circa 1930). First and foremost, Silas is identified by name. It’s an individual, and fashionable, as opposed to a trope or representative example. While the anonymous figure in Ulmann’s documentary photography is dressed simply, Silas wears aesthetically distressed jeans held up by a Gucci belt. He stares earnestly at the camera, urging the viewer to look back, to engage rather than just testify.
A similar pair is Ivan B. McClellan’s “Kortnee Solomon, Hempstead, Texas” (nd) and Ichabod Nelson Hall’s “African American on Horseback” (c. 1900). Kortnee Solomon is well known: a fourth-generation Texas cowgirl and barrel-racing phenom on a black-owned rodeo circuit. Both images feature riders on horses, but while Hall’s photograph is taken from a distance, McClellan’s is zeroed in, barely containing Solomon’s mount. She is not part of a larger scene – she is the scene and its future. In a fitting detail emphasizing Solomon’s individuality, the saddle blanket on his horse’s back bears a label reading “Iconoclast”. She and the other characters in the exhibit are fiercely present and shatter Old West mythologies that have wrongfully excluded people of color from the big picture for too long.
Outriders: Legacy of the Black Cowboy continues at the Harwood Museum of Art (238 Ledoux Streret, Taos, New Mexico) through May 7. The exhibition was organized by Museum Exhibitions Committee: Nikesha Breeze, artist; Larry Callies, Founder, Black Cowboy Museum; Rita Powdrell, Director, African American Museum and Cultural Center of New Mexico; Daphne Rice-Allen, Chair of the Board, Black American West Museum & Heritage Center; Nicole Dial-Kay, Curator of Exhibitions and Collections, Harwood Museum of Art; Ari Myers, Owner + Curator, The Valley; Emily Santhanam, curatorial assistant, Harwood Museum of Art.
