New Exhibits at YAM

Yellowstone Art Museum at 401 North 27th Street in downtown Billings presents new exhibits. Mostly Plains: Arresting Native American Art and Works by Charles M. Russell from the Charles M. Bair Family Collection; I’m Hunting Myself; and Perpetual Motion: Paintings and Works on Paper by Jean Arnold.

Mostly Plains: Arresting Native American Art And Works By Charles M. Russell From The Charles M. Bair Family Collection

February 15, 2008 - June 1, 2008.

This focused exhibition will draw attention to indigenous art-in the form of Northern Plains Indian artifacts-and imported art forms as practiced by Charles M. Russell. The Northern Plains Native American art in the Charles M. Bair Family collection reflects a culture and its aesthetic. This selection of Northern Plains artifacts includes fine examples of beadwork, quill work, and buckskin utilitarian objects. C. M. Russell respected the Native aesthetic even though he himself created work in a Euro-American tradition. His subject matter and palette were as much inspired by his Montana surroundings as were the creations of the regional Native Americans he admired.

I’m Hunting Myself: The Unattainable Prize

March 13, 2008 - June 15, 2008.

Emerging Montana artists Rollin Beamish and Andrew Schell examine the notion of individual identity in today’s collective society, and they do this through mixed media art that itself blurs the boundaries between their own individual artistic identities. I’m Hunting Myself will include explosive form and color: new work created as a collaboration between the two artists. Merging sculptural and painted forms, their commanding works lay claim to gallery spaces in a way that paradoxically reinforces our cultural institutions even as the two artists criticize our society’s materialism and sustainability.

Perpetual Motion:

Paintings And Works On Paper By Jean Arnold

March 13, 2008 - June 8, 2008

Jean Arnold was raised in the American West and all her life has been caught up with the land and the built environment we have created. Her fascinating and kaleidoscopically colorful works show us a close observer’s interpretation of this world, framed by car windows, train windows, plane windows. It’s a statement about our culture’s transience and high stakes pace.