a Wonderful Picture Western Art and the Calgary Stampede Brian Rusted

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Late in July, 1912 Frontier Days committee treasurer, E.50. Richardson recorded a $50 expense for "The Stampede," a payment to one "East. Borein, artist." (1) Before in the month, a larger payment of $173.84 was fabricated to the Brown & Bigelow Company of St. Paul, Minnesota, for "adv." (2) If this was shorthand for advert, the expense covered the licensing price to use C.M. Russell's 1908 painting A Serious Predicament on a poster ad "The Stampede." This hefty sum exceeded the total printing costs for the souvenir plan. Clearly, Guy Weadick, visionary general director of The Stampede, felt that identification with western artists similar Edward Borein and Russell was money well spent. Arranging for them both to display their paintings and sketches in the Calgary Exhibition's arts edifice was the beginning of the Calgary Stampede's interest with western art.

The West that Borein and Russell represented so ably and prolifically was already an object of retention and nostalgia by 1912. The Stampede'due south souvenir program alleged, "The great days of the cowboy have passed" (3) while the Calgary. News Telegram captioned its special department on the Stampede as, "Recollections of the by realities of the present." (4) If western fine art was a valued part of such nostalgic recollections, does it withal have resonance a century later? The organization'south longstanding involvement with local and regional art repeatedly answers the question in the affirmative. It also provides an opportunity in this essay to trace an increasingly strategic use of western art in staging a western experience for tourists and local residents.

The Calgary Stampede is not a person. Ascribing bureau past suggesting that the organization acts in a unified, anthropomorphic style like an individual who might contract commercial illustrators, support artists with commissions, charter property for exhibitions, or demonstrate connoisseurship by collecting art is a fiction of organizational life. The Calgary Stampede's staging of western experience is the cumulative issue of practices past thousands of volunteers, hundreds of staff, and ten decades' worth of decisions made by its myriad committees. As a volunteer not-for-turn a profit organization, information technology is always a work in progress, selecting and recollecting past realities in its nowadays. The Calgary Stampede's visual culture is formed through such practices, from the design of letterheads, logos, and posters, to the revision of arts and crafts exhibition categories, renaming of committees, substantial investments in public fine art, and a legacy of partnerships with major fine art institutions and associations. This essay traces aspects of those practices, proffers some preliminary documentation, and, argues that over the concluding 100 years, the Calgary Stampede has circled dorsum to recover Weadick's sense of the value of art in establishing the ethos and identity for the organisation, and in creating and maintaining a western experience. (5)

Harold Davidson has suggested that Edward Borein "was enlightened of what he was doing, and told his friends many times he was documenting the Old Due west equally he had lived and seen information technology." (six) Borein was adjustment himself with a common nomenclature of western art equally historical evidence or documentary. However much its bailiwick thing might exist rooted in memory and nostalgia, it maintains a concern for history and accuracy. This supports Brian Dippie's contention that for historians using western art as historical evidence, "Western fine art was its subject thing." (vii) Such a realist view puts a argue between what is western and what is art, subdividing its accomplishments to just or solely illustration, assessing antique works on the footing of accuracy rather than aesthetics. Such a view feeds art critics and art historians scouting reasons to marginalise or dismiss western art from the flow of other contemporary art practices. (8)

A countervailing view shifts attention from western art as a reflection of retentiveness, material culture, and the historical past, to its ideological relation with the culture that produced it, consumed it, or reproduces it. Western art may reveal attitudes about the land, wildlife, or indigenous peoples that were held in the by, while also contributing to reproducing such attitudes in the present. Martha Sandweiss augmented these representational definitions of western fine art by acknowledging that it is not comprised simply or solely of documentary, romantic, or hegemonic representations: works of western art have "complex pasts that involve artists and patrons, changing audiences, and assigned meanings that mutate and evolve over time" (9) leading Sandweiss to define western fine art as dealing "in some fashion with the West equally a place," historical, spatial, representational, or experiential. (10)

Although Weadick blazed a trail for those wishing to elaborate the value of western art to the Calgary Stampede, the organization has wandered in and out of the ruts over the last century. Evolving relations with fine art and artists makes it clear that a single definition of western art cannot encompass or accommodate a century of organizational practices. Western fine art does representational work, just it also stands as an expression of the complex ways the Calgary Stampede continues to negotiate a definition through its practices of place.

Public fine art and advertisement stake the boundaries of the Calgary Stampede's involvement with western art throughout the terminal century beginning with Weadick commissioning Borein for illustrations to advertise "The Stampede." Borein had been living in New York since 1907 and past 1912 had a reputation for illustrating magazine covers, articles, and advertisements. His western focus with an accent on historic activity and detail made him an obvious choice for the Stampede even though he was in the midst of learning the craft of etching and converting his drawings so every bit to gain the interest of New York art galleries." The majority of pieces that Borein completed for Weadick were pen and ink sketches that could accompany black and white newspaper advertisements, some even in the Stampede's gift programme.

Weadick continued to use Borein for subsequent stampedes that he organized in Winnipeg and New York between 1913 and 1916. As Harold Davidson noted, "... the Weadick rodeos became a good source of income for Ed. If zilch else, he would do the embrace for the programs." (12) Co-ordinate to Dippie, this was a "expert decision" by Weadick because it led to Borein producing and Weadick selecting "the nearly recognizable image associated with the Calgary Stampede, Borein's etching of a towering horse and rider bucking straight at the viewer, I-See-U." (13)

The sequence from Borein's original fine art work to the Stampede'southward use of this image is anything only articulate. Davidson states Borein made an ink sketch during the 1919 Stampede which was later transferred and printed every bit an etching titled Scratchin' Loftier and besides as a lithograph. It is the lithograph version that carries the additional text "I-See-U," variously explained as its title, the proper name of the bronc (derived from a equus caballus of Weadick'southward branded "IC"), a warning given by the rider to the horse, or a threat posed by the equus caballus to rider. Sheilagh Jameson suggested that the image was derived from West.J. Oliver's photograph of Clem Gardner riding High Tower during the 1919 Stampede. (14) However, the I-See-U lithograph was the graphic ballast for the 1919 Stampede affiche and information technology was also featured on the cover of the 1919 souvenir program. The lithograph version continued to be used from 1923 until 1929 and appeared again as letterhead for the Calgary Stampede in 1931. (fifteen) Borein had to take drawn the original sketch prior to the 1919 Stampede's advertising deadlines. Given his human relationship with Weadick's other rodeos between 1912 and 1919, he must take developed pieces in that period from which Weadick selected a sketch such as Stay Higher up Him Old Mitt. The "I-See-U" image continues to exist circulated and re-mediated across the Stampede'south history and was commemorated in Rich Roenisch'southward recreation of it in the early 1980s bronze sculpture Bronc Twister at the edge of the Sun Tree Park, on the Calgary Stampede grounds.

Although Borein's design has become an icon of the Calgary Stampede, the precedent of using original western art as the footing of the Stampede's visual identity all simply disappeared with Weadick's departure in 1932. Artists like Charlie Beil showed individual initiative and produced work for letterheads, while Doug Stephens, Cochrane painter and sculpture, would tackle rodeo program illustrations in 1970. But it would exist three decades before the organization regained a strategic relation between fine art and the western feel of patrons and public, and an boosted three decades before local artists would over again accept every bit prominent a role as Russell or Borein.

In 1934, a young sculptor living at the Kananaskis Ranch in Seebe donated a bronze sculpture of a horse to the Calgary Stampede. It was described in the Stampede'south Prize Listing that year as "The Beil Cowboy Artists Special." Charlie Beil was the "cowboy creative person." (16) In the previous yr, Crossfield rodeo competitor Pete Knight had won the Canadian Cowboy Championship Bucking Equus caballus contest for the third time and earned the correct to take domicile the substantial silvery H.R.H Prince of Wales bays. Other trophies usually awarded then were wrist watches and occasionally a gold chugalug buckle. In 1927, there were several silver trophies that featured livestock on a forest base such every bit the wild steer riding trophy offered past Pat Burns & Co.; those pieces were likely made past local Calgary jeweller and member of the Calgary Exhibition and Stampede board of directors, David E. Black.

Charlie Beil's donation was a unique addition to the awards presentations that took place on Saturday night, July 1934, and was awarded to the Best All-round Cowboy. Herman Linder of Cardston had won the Canadian All-round in the iii previous years and capturing the N American All-Round Title in 1934 made him the recipient of The Beil Cowboy Artists Special. (17)

If Borein'south art work consolidated a visual identity for the Stampede in the 1920s, it was the ingenuity of Charlie Beil, 1 of Russell's proteges, who helped elaborate information technology over the next 3 decades. (eighteen) Russell had championed Beil'south work at the cease of his life, saying, "He is the best I've ever seen at modelling horses and cowpunchers." (19) Such respect and mentorship led to Bell assisting Nancy Russell with unfinished bronzes and paintings of Russell'southward, prior to moving north into Alberta and eventually settling in Banff. (20) By 1934, Beil had completed commissions for the Calgary Zoo and Calgary's Model Dairy. Although his donation to the Stampede was a stroke of luminescence, it would be five years before Bell completed another rodeo trophy bronze.

In 1939, as Canada emerged from the Depression to face Globe War II, Beil'due south name reappeared in the Prize List. This time the bronze was sponsored by Calgary Power and was named after the corporation'south president, K.A. Gaherty. The trophy was to exist awarded to the winner of the Due north American Bucking Horse Riding contest. Harald Gunderson, Linder's biographer, relates how Beil met Gaherty while on a pack trip in the Rockies and convinced him to sponsor the trophy. (21)

Awarding rodeo trophy bronze sculptures as rodeo prizes was an innovation unique to the Calgary Stampede. The tradition took hold with the Calgary Ability trophy. In the early 1940s, CFCN began sponsorship with the Gordon Beloved Trophy and the Calgary Brewery expanded its sponsorship to include the A.Due east. Cross Memorial Trophy. In 1946, other rodeo events had found sponsors as well. The substantial Gas Visitor trophy for the chuckwagon race had to be won iii times before information technology could exist claimed permanently. Individual twelvemonth winners received a statuary plaque that featured a relief rendering of the bays.

Beil continued producing bays bronzes into the 1960s, when he scaled back his activities and designed relief plaques for the rodeo winners. In 1972, the Calgary Stampede invited five sculptors to continue the Beil'south tradition: Malcolm MacKenzie, Come Martens, Gina McDougall, Douglas Stephens, and Gerald Tail Feathers. A decade later, the Rodeo Committee began a more formal, juried competition process asking artists to submit works selected by jury for trophies over the adjacent five years. (22)

Calgary Exhibition prize lists prior to 1912 make it clear that arts competitions and displays were a regular and significant feature of its educational mandate. Certainly from the nineteenth century forward, "Exhibitions were in the vanguard of pop education." (23) This mandate is evident to this day in the arts and crafts section organized by the Calgary Stampede's Western Showcase committee and in its loftier school art competitions and art scholarship programs organized in conjunction with the Calgary Stampede Foundation.

When the Exhibition and Stampede organizations merged in the 1920s, the educational mandate of the arts displays could take begun to reflect western subjects. Instead, the new Exhibition and Stampede seems to have preferred to host exhibits by other arts organizations and associations rather than develop its ain strategic mandate. Every bit early every bit 1909, the National Gallery of Canada had sent a touring bear witness of paintings to the Calgary Exhibition. They were displayed in the arts edifice constructed for the 1908 Rule Exhibition. (24) This initiates a practice maintained for over twoscore years. Despite an cheering commencement exhibiting Borein and Russell 1912, and Russell over again 1919, it was not until the late 1950s that the Calgary Stampede re-imagines an arts mandate with a western focus.

The National Gallery of Canada continued to use the Stampede'southward art gallery for travelling exhibitions. It returned again in 1929 after the Stampede congenital an art gallery on the 2d floor of the grandstand edifice. (25) Beginning in 1935 and continuing into the 1940s, the National Gallery supplied an annual Photographic Salon (shown in conjunction with a display by the Calgary Photographic Society), while displays of paintings and watercolours from the national collections of Canada, England, and Scotland began in 1931 and connected until 1955.

In that location were besides regular touring exhibits of piece of work by the Royal Canadian University of Arts, including Canadian work that had been exhibited at the 1939 New York World's Fair.

The Alberta Social club of Artists made the nigh consistent employ of the Stampede'southward fine art gallery. (26) The provincial association was formed in 1931 through the considerable activity of the Edmonton Art Association and the Calgary Sketch Guild, merely it was Calgary'due south Institute of Technology and Fine art--what would become the Alberta College of Art and Design--that had a more than decisive affect. The founding instructors, notably A.C. Leighton, pushed for regional groups to amalgamate, despite controversial differences in their artful standards.

Once formally chartered, the Alberta Society of Artists held regular, juried art shows with a summer exhibit in the Stampede's grandstand art gallery. The offset exhibition took place in 1931 and included piece of work by some 16 artists. Paintings by Roland Gissing and A.C. Leighton, president of the Society, were among those displayed. For its second showroom in 1932, 20-one artists were featured including contempo members Annora Dark-brown, Nicholas de Grandmaison, (27) and Carl Rungius. The Stampede continued to host these annual ASA exhibitions into the 1940s, along with displays by the Calgary Sketch Club, until these groups formed the Calgary Allied Arts Council and used their own exhibition space in Coste Firm for the juried, summer exhibition.

Until the finish of the 1950s, the Alberta Society of Artists and the Calgary Sketch Club continued to mountain regular art displays during Stampede. In the early 1950s, the president of the Lodge, James Nicoll, along with Illingworth Kerr (who had assumed A.C. Leighton's part at the Constitute of Fine art and Engineering science), and Archie Key, managing managing director of Coste House, became regular members of the Calgary Stampede's art committee. They organized the art displays through the 1950s, and shortly after Kerr took on the office of ASA president. Roland Gissing also joined the committee. Their efforts were enhanced when Calgary Power began to sponsor a brandish of historical works from the Glenbow Foundation's collection of works about settler and ethnic cultures of southern Alberta. Paintings by John Innes, Thomas Mower Martin, and Frederick Verner added historical depth to the exhibition of other western art works by Russell, Rungius, Gissing, Lethbridge creative person and author Edward Hagell, along with contemporary works by Gerald Tail Feathers and Ted Schintz.

In 1959, the Stampede'south art committee was renamed the Arts and Photography Exhibits Section although its membership remained stable. Coinciding with the opening of the Big 4 Building that year, the committee's display was located in the lower level of the new exhibition space. The organisation lasted for merely one year: in 1960 president Mervyn Dutton noted in his almanac written report to the Calgary Stampede shareholders:

            Senior art and craft classes were    eliminated as was the colored slide    exhibition. An invitational fine art display    featuring three prominent Western artists    drew much favorable attending and an    exceptionally fine historical exhibit was    supplied by Glenbow Foundation. (28)        

The art commission was disbanded and direct contact with Calgary arts organizations severed. The annual art display now came under the responsibility of the Exhibits Committee with Ernest Lamm, a local gallery owner, existence one of its members. This change in direction seemed abrupt and irritated some in the arts community. Dutton implied that the decision had been taken to give Stampede attendees the experience they were seeking, and this was echoed in The Albertan 's headline: "Western Theme in Exhibits."29 Those attending the Stampede would "have the opportunity of enjoying more of the western scene" 30 and information technology marked a strategic shift in the Calgary Stampede's relation to western art.

Although Roland Gissing's position on the Art Committee disappeared in this shift, he was one of the artists invited by the new committee to exhibit piece of work in 1960, forth with Gerta Christoffesen. Treasurer of the get-go Stampede, Eastward.L. Richardson, had organized Gissing's debut exhibition at the Calgary Public Library in 1929,31 and there were subsequent exhibitions of his work during the Stampedes of 1934, 1947, and 1957 when he either participated in the ASA displays or had an individual exhibit. (32)

Although the 1960s seem to accept been a decade when the Calgary Stampede sought greater autonomy in all aspects of its programming, it would have another xv years before volunteers began producing a western art show. If commission changes and exhibition location in 1960 were a get-go step, the 2d occurs when the area known as Flare Square opened "Arts Live" in 1972: "Everything from sculpture, painting and photography to theatre productions, wandering street theatre and dancing was presented with many participatory workshops where visitors could personally experience creative expression." (33) The area included visual arts by prairie artists, and the Banff School of Fine Arts showcased aspects of its summer programming. Flare Square lasted simply a few years, just Arts Alive re-appeared in 1975 and 1976, first in the Corral and then returning to the lower level of the Big 4 Building. It included Women's Earth as a subcommittee along with a photo salon and school art displays. In 1976, its "Fine Arts Display" featured 600 works from the collection of the Alberta Foundation for the Arts.

The next step in producing its own western art show came in 1978 with some other committee shuffle. Arts Live yielded to Women'due south World which in plow was re-named "Creative Living." With a new mandate on everyday creativity, this committee organized a "Frontier Images" exhibition in 1978 featuring piece of work by Charlie Beil, Jay Contway, Ace Powell, and Robert Scriver, "considered by many as the leading living western sculptor." (34) In 1979, the art display in Creative Living was described as a "Western Art Show" and the exhibit over again featured piece of work by Beil and Scriver.

This intense flurry of name and committee changes in the late 1970s were the foundation of the Stampede'due south current Western Art Show that features creative person, artisan, and photo salons, fine art and photo galleries, an showroom of piece of work produced during an annual ranch residency program, and the almanac western art sale. Specific decisions taken over the preceding two decades culminated in the organizing and hosting of a western art display consistent with and shaping the Calgary Stampede's emergent mandate to preserve western heritage. As confirmation, volunteers of the art committees of Western Showcase (the current name assigned to the erstwhile Creative Living committee) worked with the Glenbow Museum in 1995 to mount a display of original works and letters by C.M. Russell.

Information technology was common for art displays at agricultural fairs and exhibitions to spark criticism from art earth professionals and these changes were not without controversy. (35)Former member of the 1950s-era art commission, Archie Primal, sent a sizzling letter to The Albertan in 1975 when he learned that Stampede president Jerry D'Arcy was because purchasing fine art work past an American artist for Stampede utilize. D'Arcy had also announced expansion plans for the Stampede that included a new arts centre. Key's frustration was sparked by dominant nationalist concerns but likewise by the Stampede's strategic emphasis on western art that diverged from engagements with gimmicky art and regional institutions that had characterized displays when Key had been a member of the art committee. (36)

Today the Calgary Stampede is a major art collector. Since establishing a competitive process to select trophy bronzes for rodeo and chuckwagon events, the Stampede has retained a copy of each statuary for each event, in each five year serial. In the mid-1990s, the Stampede's Historical Committee began commissioning murals for Calgary Stampede buildings that commemorate fundamental events in the organisation'due south history. During the belatedly 1950s, Charlie Beil also painted a number of murals for what was then the Luxton Museum in Banff, the Cascade Hotel, the Palliser Hotel in Calgary, and Stampede manager, Neb Herron's basement recreation room. Four murals by Beil from this catamenia bring the western scene into the offices and hallways of the Calgary Stampede's headquarters building. These initiatives form the basis of a public art collection that makes western heritage visible and accessible. What started as an expression of the Stampede's promotional needs in 1912 has evolved to shape the Stampede mandate and produced a pregnant collection of art. (37)

The steps taken to develop a western art show in the 1960s, the displays of Bell's bronzes and frontier images in the 1970s or the more than recent conquering of the "Quick Draw" busts of Stampede personalities by Montana artist Jay Contway, coincide with a global interest in heritage and the need for organizations like the Calgary Stampede to interpret its history to an diverse public. Increasing recognition of the dislocation from or the absenteeism of a shared by has guided a self-conscious try to collect and showroom heritage artifacts to produce a sense of identity and place.

The cosmos of a public fine art committee in 2008 with the ambitious mandate of commissioning ten public sculptures has extended the strategic vision of western art beyond the confines of the Calgary Stampede grounds and its ten-day festival. Nether the leadership of past president George Brookman, these commissions inject the Calgary Stampede's sense of western heritage into everyday borough experience. (38) Sparked by a concept from Brookman, Rich Roenisch and Bob Spaith'south bronze installation comprising 15 horses, By the Banks of the Bow will be unveiled as part of the Calgary Stampede's centennial celebrations. (39)

The give-and-take rodeo originally referred to the circling of cattle as vaqueros rounded them upward for branding. Another circle is taking shape now, one that began in 1912 with Russell and Borein and is being completed by the Calgary Stampede's decisive gesture in having local artists produce original work for the annual poster. Before conceptions of the poster every bit a marketing tool highly-seasoned to target demographics accept been superseded by using the iconic visions of western artists for the identity needs in the present. Whether contemporary residents of Calgary share or cull to share in western heritage or not, the western fine art of the Calgary Stampede provides opportunities to revisit and revise connections with history, to reverberate on the practices of a living system, and to re-imagine competing visions of the west.

NOTES

(1) Frontier Days Commission, Cashbook 1912 (Calgary: Calgary Stampede Archives), 7.

(2) Frontier Days Committee, Cashbook, 5.

(3) Frontier Days Committee, The Stampede at Calgary, Alberta 1912, (Calgary: Herald Western Printing, 1912), 49.

(iv) "Stampede edition," Calgary News Telegram (Wednesday, September 4, 1912), i.

(5) An earlier version of this essay formed the introduction to the Nickle Arts Museum's 2010 exhibition, The Art of the Calgary Stampede. Information technology developed from the enquiry involved in curating the exhibition, and revises, corrects, and updates some of its ideas.

(6) Harold One thousand. Davidson, Edward Borein Cowboy Artist (Garden City, New York: Doubleday and Co,, 1974), 113.

(seven) Brian Dippie, '"Chop! Chop!' Progress in the Visual Presentation of Western Visual History," Historian 66, no. 3 (2004), 492.

(8) I tried to explore some of the definitional and categorical impurities of western art in relation to other contemporary art worlds in: Rusted, Brian, "A Wonderful Picture: Western Art and the Calgary Stampede," Icon, Make, Myth: The Calgary Stampede, ed. Max Foran (Athabasca: AU Press, 2008), 271-291.

(9) Martha Sandweiss, "Views and Reviews: Western Art and Western History," Nether an Open Heaven. Rethinking America's Western By, ed. Due west. Cronon, M. Miles and J. Gitlin (New York: W.W. Norton, 1992), 186.

(10) Sandweiss, "Viewand Reviews," 192. Davidson, Edward Borein, 74.

(11) Dippie, "Chop! Chop!" 499.

(12) Davidson, Edward Borein, 78.

(13) Brian Dippie, "One W, 1 Myth: Transborder Continuity in Western Art," American Review of Canadian Studies 33, no. 4 (Winter 2003), 515.

(14) Sheilagh Jameson, W.J. Oliver: Life Through a Master'due south Lens (Calgary: Glenbow Museum, 1984), 35.

(15) Borein had begun carving in this period, just the works that he exhibited in the arts edifice with Russell in 1912 were sketches. See "Stampede Pictures are guarded night and day by Police," Calgary News Telegram (Midweek, September 4,1912), 4. It was the lithograph of this image not the etching that was used for the posters and graphic work.

(16) Rodeo Committee, Stampede Prize List 1934, (Calgary: Calgary Exhibition and Stampede), 24.

(17) Linder's biographer Harald Gunderson reports the year of the award every bit 1934, which corroborates the Calgary Exhibition 1934 Prize List. Come across The Linder Legend" The Story of Pro Rodeo and Its Champion (Calgary: Sagebrush Publishing, 1996), 123. An article in Banff'southward Crag and Canyon that appears in 1976 following Bell's death reports 1932 as the year when he began sculpting for the Calgary Stampede. Ken Liddell's article in the Calgary Herald in 1951 dates the start of Beirs work with the Stampede more informally as "the last 15 years" ("Raffled Jackasses Gave Creative person Start," Calgary Herald, 9 June 1951, 9).

(eighteen) Ainslie and Laviolette suggest that Bong besides spent time with Edward Borein in California in 1927. Run into Patricia Ainslie and Mary-Beth Laviolette, Alberta Art and Artists: An Overview (Calgary: 5th House 2007), 119.

(nineteen) Quoted in Banff's Crag and Canyon, 4 August 1976, no 31,vii, but see also, John Taliaferro, Charles Yard. Russell. The Life and Fable of America's Cowboy Artist (Toronto: Little, Dark-brown and Co. 1996), 2594-60.

(xx) Personal communication with Great Falls sculptor and artist Jay Contway, January 2006.

(21) Gunderson, Linder Legend, 123. Grey also mentions this meet which may be Gunderson'south source. See John H. Greyness, A Make of Its Ain: The 100 Year History of the Calgary Exhibition and Stampede (Western Producer Prairie Books, 1985), 148.

(22) Of the original five sculptors, Gina McDougall continues to exist active and had a bronze bays selected for the serial that ended in 2007.

(23) E.A. Heaman, The Inglorious Arts of Peace: Exhibitions in Canadian Society during the Nineteenth Century (Toronto: Academy of Toronto Press, 1999), 23.

(24) Gray, A Brand of its Own, 87.

(25) Ibid. Gray indicates that in that location was a touring prove in 1922 of Canadian piece of work including the Group of Seven that had been shown at the Wembley Showroom in England. The Wembley Exhibit, even so, took place in 1924-25. See Anne Clendinning, "Exhibiting a Nation: Canada at the British Empire Exhibition 1924-25," Social History XXXIX, no. 77 (2006), 79-107.

(26) A blueprint of the Stampede's art gallery circa 1940 is in the Archives of the National Gallery of Canada. Run into National Gallery of Canada Fonds, Box 118, File four.

(27) Perhaps in keeping with the entrepreneurial character of western artists, Hugh Dempsey notes despite de Grandmaison's "antipathy to the art customs, its galleries and exhibitions," he "became a commercially successful artist who was nigh unknown in the art earth." Encounter Hugh Dempsey, History in their blood: The Indian portraits of Nicholas de Grandmaison (Vancouver: Douglas & McIntyre, 1982), 27,

(28) Calgary Stampede. 75th Almanac Report, 1960 (Calgary: Calgary Exhibition and Stampede Ltd.), 7.

(29) "Western Theme in Exhibits," The Albertan (July 11,1960), half dozen.

(xxx) Ibid.

(31) Max Foran and Nonie Houlton, Roland Gissing: The People's Painter (Calgary: University of Calgary Press, 1988), 17.

(32) Gray mentions that Gissing's exhibition of landscapes in 1934 was held in conjunction with a Royal Canadian Academy of Arts brandish. See Grayness, A Make of its Ain, 99.

(33) Calgary Stampede. Annual Report, 1972 (Calgary: Calgary Exhibition and Stampede, Ltd.), 2.

(34) Calgary Stampede, Souvenir Plan 1978 (Calgary), sixteen.

(35) "Specialized fine art exhibitions had been held since the 1830s and were organized by artist societies in Montreal and Toronto from the 1860s onwards. In afterward years professionals began to carelessness fairs, where pictures were badly hung too high or in dark corners - and judging was idiosyncratic." Heamon, Inglorious Arts, 120.

(36) See Archie Central, "Letters to the Editor: Art acquisition requires much more thought," The Albertan (August 12, 1975), 4.

(37) As part of the city's annual Jane Walks, the Calgary Stampede'due south Historical and Public Art committees organized an art walk every bit 1 means of jubilant this century of collecting. See http://janeswalk,net/walks/view/calgary stampede art walk/. Brookman also championed the Calgary Stampede'due south short-lived endeavor to concord the "Pavillion contemporary fine art sale" in 2007 and 2008 to enhance funds for the Calgary Stampede'due south Foundation'southward charitable activities with youth.

(38) At that place has been considerable media coverage of the activities and accomplishments of the Public Art Committee. Meet for instance, Richard White "Art Can Transform City," Calgary Herald (May 31, 2008), J8

(39) Run into Valerie Fortney, "Statuary Stampede sculpture golden for Alberta artists," Calgary Herald (May 1, 2012), retrieved from http://www'calgaryherald.com/entertainment/Fortney+Bronze +Stampede+sculpture+gold+Alberta+artists/653 3048/story.html.

Brian Rusted is an Acquaintance Professor in the University of Calgary"southward Section of Communications and Civilization. He teaches courses in folklore, performance, and visual culture. He guest curated an exhibition, The Art of the Calgary Stampede, at the Nickle Arts Museum and has been a volunteer with the Calgary Stampede's Western Fine art show.

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