National Cowboy Museum

 One of the reasons I wanted to stop in Oklahoma City was to take Trish to the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum.  This is a huge and marvelous museum on the outskirts of the city that contains everything from paintings to sculpture to dioramas to guns to saddles…and much more.

Ready to go inside.

We could have spent several days with the artwork.  Perhaps our favorite was a Bierstadt painting of a German settlers wagon train.  The light seems to originate from within the painting itself and it seemed that if we stayed around, the sun would actually set.

How did he do that?

We loved the Remington sculpture bronze castings and marveled at the tiny details that still come out through the lost wax casting process.  These were filled with life and motion.

It’s called Cowboys Come to Town for Christmas.

There were saddles that changed from utility to artwork with the exquisite leather tooling and dioramas of full size life on the frontier.  Since my last visit here, there is much more about cowgirls and native peoples in a very appropriate way.

A work of art in leather.

We loved the entire visit and will surely stop here again.