Curating the West
Each Month We Ask Leading Museum
Curators About What’s Going On In Their World.
What event (gallery show,
museum exhibit, etc.) in the
next few months are you
looking forward to, and why?
Every August the Livingston
Center for Art and Culture hosts
Plein Air on the Yellowstone,
where artists participate in a
week-long paint out in Park
County. The wet painting show
is amazing because everyone
views the landscape differently.
And there is no doubt Montana
has some of the best material
to work with! This will be my
second year participating.
What are you reading?
In Cold Blood by Truman Capote.
I am currently writing a true
crime non-fiction, and while
Capote’s is considered fiction,
there is something about the way
he brings to life the people and
the place that is inspiring.
Interesting exhibit, gallery
opening or work of art
you’ve seen recently.
I recently saw Deborah Butterfield
talk for the Bozeman Art Museum.
She was inspiring in the way she
discussed her older work and the
progression of how it brought herto where she is now. I’ve seen her
work in museums but hadn’t made
the connection that she spends
part of the year in Bozeman. Her
work has a beautiful reverence
for nature and time and seems to
beckon one towards a simpler age.
What are you researching
at the moment?
The museum is housed in an old
jail, and includes built-in gallows
where one man, Seth Danner,
was hung in 1924. I recently
reinterpreted this space and
became so fascinated with his
story that I am currently writing
a book about his life, the case
and the execution. The case was
pretty prominent in local news
during that time so there aregreat snippets to be found of his
life in the jail, where he lived for
about a year.
What is your dream
exhibit to curate? Or see
someone else curate?
I would love to curate a plein
air exhibit featuring local artists,
based on a theme of “old”
Gallatin County. The story of this
place is literally changing on a
daily basis, it’d be nice to bring
awareness to and capture where
we are now and how fleeting
our visual history can be. I am a
plein air painter myself, there is
something about that time spent
in a location that I think viewers
can relate too. It’s different than a
photograph, its more personal.Kelly Suzanne Hartman
Curator
Gallatin History Museum
Bozeman, MT
(406) 522-8122
http://www.gallatinhistorymuseum.orgGallatin History Museum in Bozeman, Montana.
The Montana museum is housed in an old jail.