MUSEUM TALK by MICHAEL GRAUER

MUSEUM TALK by MICHAEL GRAUER

100 years of painting 'Plein Air' in Texas

THURSDAY ~ Oct. 28, 2021
7:00 pm
at the San Angelo Museum of Fine Arts
1 Love Street, San Angelo, Texas

The lure of the Wild West in Texas has inspired artists for 100 years to journey across Texas and beyond, painting the vast open lands and rivers.  Taking us on that journey today is Michael Grauer, McCasland Chair of Cowboy Culture & Curator of Cowboy Collections & Western Art at the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City. 

Michael Grauer's talk will be free and open to the public. 

A Kansas native, Michael Grauer holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts in painting and a Bachelor of Fine Arts in art history from the University of Kansas; the Master of Arts in art history from Southern Methodist University; and the Master of Arts in history from West Texas A&M University.  He was the University of Kansas Kress Foundation Department of Art History’s distinguished alumnus for 2012.

Grauer worked at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, before becoming curator of art and Western heritage and associate director for curatorial affairs at the Panhandle-Plains Historical Museum, Canyon, Texas, from 1987 to 2018. He was also Adjunct Lecturer in Western American Studies at West Texas A&M University.

In September 2018 Grauer joined the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City as the McCasland Chair of Cowboy Culture & Curator of Cowboy Collections & Western Art. He has curated over 150 exhibitions on Western art, culture, and history and authored 65 publications, including the Dictionary of Texas Artists, 1700-1945, Rounded Up in Glory: Frank Reaugh, Texas Renaissance Man, and Making a Hand: The Art of H. D. Bugbee, which received the Western History Association Wrangler Award for Best Western Art Book for 2020.

Mr. Grauer lectures on art, history, and culture across the American West. He does a living history cowboy presentation called “Cowboy Mike.”

He serves as president of the Western Cattle Trail Association; vice-president of the International Chisholm Trail Association; on the boards of the Kansas Cowboy Hall of Fame, the National Drovers Hall of Fame; is a member of the research committee for the National Cowgirl Hall of Fame in Fort Worth; on the Charles M. Russell catalogue raisonne committee, and is a board member and on the executive committee for Westerners International.