Blazing Saddle: Reimagining the American West

This exhibition featured a selection of black-and-white photographs from the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center collection, alongside digital color images and a music video, that addresses central myths of the American experience associated with horseback riding, ranch labor, cowboys, and rodeo culture. In a recent article in the New York Times, Sarah Maslin Nir wrote, “The contribution of black people to the taming of the American West has long been whitewashed from history. From Hollywood depictions to textbooks, black people—who made up a quarter of all cowboys—have been largely erased from the frontier narrative.”

This Hoene Hoy Photography Gallery exhibition was curated for the "Film 218: Genre: The Western" class in spring 2020.