Event preview
Booth Western Art Museum Birthday Party
Includes Lone Ranger, Rangerette and Tonto costume contest, showings of commemorative 10-year video, hot dog lunch ($5), performances of “Billy Goat Gruff and Other Stuff” by All Hands Productions Puppeteers, crafts and exhibit tours.
10:30 a.m.-3:30 p.m. Aug. 24. $10; 65 and over, $8; students, $7; free under age 12. 501 Museum Drive, Cartersville. 770-387-1300, www.boothmuseum.org.
TWO VIEWS OF THE WEST
Western art will ride high in the saddle for metro Atlantans this fall, with complementary exhibitions drawn from a significant permanent collection in Cody, Wyo., traveling to Cartersville’s Booth Western Museum of Art and the High Museum of Art in Atlanta.
The Booth will showcase contemporary pieces in "Today's West: Contemporary Art from the Buffalo Bill Center of the West," paralleling the emphasis of the Cartersville institution's own growing collection, while "Go West: Art of the American Frontier" at the High will feature historic works.
- Running Oct 24 through April 13 at the Booth, "Today's West" will feature 60 mostly large-scale contemporary works in a range of media that trace Western art developments from 1960 to today. Artists including Fritz Scholder, Bill Schenck, Anne Coe, Jim Bama and Carrie Ballantyne are featured.
- "Go West," Nov. 3 through April 13 at the High, covers Western art-making between 1830 and 1930, with 300 objects, including paintings and sculptures by Frederic Remington and Charles Russell as well as posters, photographs and paintings created for Buffalo Bill Cody and his Wild West show.
“If you want to see the full history of Western art, across 200 years, you’ve gotta go see their show and our show,” Booth executive director Seth Hopkins said. — HOWARD POUSNER
Seth Hopkins gets fewer double takes than he did a decade ago when people find out that he runs a Western art museum in a Deep South town.
Ten years on, many have visited the Booth Western Art Museum in downtown Cartersville, seen some contemporary paintings from the land of sagebrush and cactus, maybe heard some cowboy poetry or sampled chuck wagon grub at one of the many family-friendly events it hosts.
“I’ll run across folks in Atlanta who will say, ‘Yeah, I’ve heard of that and somebody told me it was cool, and I’ve been meaning to get up there.’ And I’ll tell them, ‘I understand, it’s been a busy 10 years,’ ” Hopkins, the Booth’s executive director, wryly recounted.
It’s been busy for the Booth, too, and looks to stay that way.
The museum, which set an attendance high of 55,000 in 2010 when it opened an Ansel Adams photography exhibition, is planning a fall show in conjunction with the High Museum of Art drawn from the permanent collection of the Buffalo Bill Center of the West in Cody, Wyo. But first the Booth plans to celebrate its 10th with a Birthday Party and Member Appreciation Day on Aug. 24.
We asked Hopkins about the challenges on the horse trail ahead, especially ongoing efforts to narrow the distance between Atlanta and Cartersville (less than 45 minutes up I-75 from I-285’s north end) and between the Bartow County town and way out West.
Q: What’s been the Booth’s greatest success and most difficult challenge in its first decade?
A: I would say the connections we've made among people who have a love of art and the West, people who did not have a mecca, so to speak, where they could meet like-minded people. They thought they were the only crazy ones in Atlanta because nobody in their circle of friends had similar interests. Quite honestly it's amazing how often they live right around the corner from each other in the same subdivision.
Q: The Booth has probably converted some new folks to Western art, too, right?
A: That's true. We find people who were collecting prints or posters who are now using our library and our staff as resources (for building) significant Western art collections. That's really exciting when I get to spend OPM.
Q: Other people’s money?
A: Exactly. They come to us (for advice), and it's one of the indicators that lets me know we've got some good credibility, that people trust us and value us as a resource.
Q: How about the Booth’s biggest challenge so far?
A: To continue to increase awareness and battle against what my friend who used to run Barnsley Gardens called "distance resistance." Or the perception that if it's in Cartersville, how good can it be?
The other challenge is that we’ve demonstrated when we do a blockbuster exhibition, like the Ansel Adams show, that that will move the meter. The problem is, where do you go from Ansel Adams? So we’ve investigated doing some blockbuster-type exhibitions, and they become cost-prohibitive.
Q: Like sharing a major exhibit with the High Museum?
A: "It's a huge three-way partnership, and this is probably the most expensive show we've ever mounted, but the opportunity to work with the High and the Buffalo Bill Center was something that we couldn't pass up. So we tightened up in some other areas to make it work.
Q: Last year, the Booth opened a commercial gallery in a storefront (at 13 N. Wall St.) mere steps from the museum’s south entrance. How is the Downtown Gallery going?
A: We're not selling a ton of art; we're doing OK. But it was as much about giving our members who are artists (more than 200 of the museum's 1,200 members are photographers, painters or sculptors) an outlet to show their work, have it be for sale.
There are other positives, too. Cartersville is in the process of doing a 25-year strategic plan for downtown, and I just got a draft copy of it. They’d interviewed probably 100 downtown business owners and other stakeholders, and it was interesting to see how many times the Booth’s name came up and art in general came up.
People now are clued into art as one quality-of-life and economic development generator. Art probably was not on those same people’s lips 10 years ago.
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