Image: Nora Eccles Harrison Museum of Art, Los Angeles
The Nora Eccles Harrison Museum of Art in Logan, Utah, is presenting 'The Lure and Lore of the West', an exhibition that examines the blurred lines between Western myth and history through artworks dating from the late 19th century to the present. The exhibition is on view from January 20, 2026, through May 8, 2027, and brings together depictions of prospectors, pioneers, cowboys and the landscapes that have long shaped ideas of the American West.
According to the museum’s exhibition text, the show ranges across themes of travel, exploration and western expansion, alongside myths and monsters of the West, heroes and legends, natural resources, agriculture, homesteading and the Western sublime. It links those themes to both imagery and landscape, framing the region not just as subject matter but as a place where stories have been built, repeated and revised over time.
The exhibition includes a life-sized Bigfoot skeleton “unearthed” by artist Clayton Bailey, a detail that underscores the show’s interest in folklore and invented histories. The museum also highlights photographs by Ansel Adams, Harry Reuben Reynolds and Ralph Clark, presented as views of western state and national parks that have increasingly come under pressure from mass tourism and development. The exhibition text poses a direct question about that changing terrain: as wilderness disappears, what stories will remain, and what new legends will emerge?
The artist list spans a wide historical and stylistic range, bringing together figures including Bill Abright, Grafton Tyler Brown, Nancy Buchanan, Cyrus Edwin Dallin, Roy De Forest, Gregg Deal, Angela Ellsworth, Dorothea Lange, Russell Lee, LeConte Stewart, Todd Walker, Edward Weston and Mahonri Mackintosh Young. The museum says the presentation also includes works by artists such as Bill Abright, Calvin Fletcher, Harry Reuben Reynolds and others whose work engages the visual language of the West from different angles and periods.
One featured work already highlighted by the museum is Roy De Forest’s 'Bigfoot 2', a 1985 lithograph reproduced in the exhibition materials. Another recent acquisition on view in the exhibition is Angela Ellsworth’s 'Seer Bonnet XXX (Desmonda)' from 2025, described by the artist in museum materials as part of her ongoing 'Seer Bonnets' series. The museum’s account explains that the bonnets are sculptural forms covered in thousands of steel, pearl-tipped corsage pins and are intended to stand in for the estimated thirty-five wives of Joseph Smith, reimagining these women with visionary and revelatory powers.
'The Lure and Lore of the West' is curated by Danielle Stewart, PhD, with curatorial research and contributions from USU graduate and undergraduate interns as well as a high school intern. The museum’s exhibition page also notes that the opening reception is accompanied by 'Collecting the West: Tall Tales from Museums and Archives Across the Disciplines', a panel discussion scheduled for January 28, 2026, from 5:30 to 7:00 PM at the Russell/Wanlass Performance Hall. The exhibition remains on view at NEHMA through May 8, 2027.
