TY - JOUR
T1 - (Re)imagining the west
T2 - The Whitney Gallery of Western Art's sacred hymn
AU - Dickinson, Greg
AU - Ott, Brian L.
AU - Aoki, Eric
N1 - Funding Information:
The authors received following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article : This research was supported by the Dean’s Fund for Excellence in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at the University of Colorado Denver, and by professional development grants from the Department of Communication Studies at Colorado State University.
PY - 2013/2
Y1 - 2013/2
N2 - In 2009, the Whitney Gallery of Western Art (WGWA), located within the Buffalo Bill Historical Center (BBHC) in Cody, Wyoming, was redesigned - its art rehung and its vision of the West reimagined. The newly designed gallery replaced the structuring principles of history, artist, and genre that had governed the previous layout and design of the gallery with a thematic structure that elicits a series of affective dissonances. In this essay, we argue that the redesigned Whitney Gallery of Western Art performs a sacred hymn that - in repositioning Buffalo Bill Cody as its orchestrating figure - resolves discordant images and narratives of the West, harmonizes diverse themes into a single vision, and reconstitutes national identity in terms of the Western sublime.
AB - In 2009, the Whitney Gallery of Western Art (WGWA), located within the Buffalo Bill Historical Center (BBHC) in Cody, Wyoming, was redesigned - its art rehung and its vision of the West reimagined. The newly designed gallery replaced the structuring principles of history, artist, and genre that had governed the previous layout and design of the gallery with a thematic structure that elicits a series of affective dissonances. In this essay, we argue that the redesigned Whitney Gallery of Western Art performs a sacred hymn that - in repositioning Buffalo Bill Cody as its orchestrating figure - resolves discordant images and narratives of the West, harmonizes diverse themes into a single vision, and reconstitutes national identity in terms of the Western sublime.
KW - Whitney Gallery of Western Art
KW - affect
KW - memory
KW - movement
KW - sublime
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84872186122&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1177/1532708612464633
DO - 10.1177/1532708612464633
M3 - Review article
AN - SCOPUS:84872186122
SN - 1532-7086
VL - 13
SP - 21
EP - 34
JO - Cultural Studies - Critical Methodologies
JF - Cultural Studies - Critical Methodologies
IS - 1
ER -