These Noble Brutes: Engravings of the American Bison

These Noble Brutes: Engravings of the American Bison

RAPID CITY — On display May 31st, 2025 – October 5th, 2025

We are excited to feature this special traveling exhibit curated and collected by Lee Silliman.

This exhibit is a cornucopia of vintage engravings depicting the iconic mammal of the American West. These engravings span 160 years of art, from early European copperplate engravings by artists who never saw the animal, to nineteenth century woodblock engravings by American artists who saw the animal in its wild state. Many prints are beautifully hand-tinted, and a few works are colorful chromolithographs. All of these original prints are attractively matted and framed in handsome hardwood moldings. In addition to imagery, text panels with prose and poetry relate the history of the animal so central to the story of the American West. The exhibit also includes a special selection of Native American artifacts related to the bison from Rapid City’s Duhamel Collection.

Aspects of the bison story that are illuminated in this exhibit include: the animal in its wild state and its natural enemies; Native American and Euro-American bison hunting techniques; the utility of bison products; the horrendous slaughter of bison in the 1800s by robe and hide hunters; and, finally, the scavenging of bison bones after near extermination. Images and commentary blend together in this exhibit.

The list of notable frontier artists whose paintings were the source of these derivative engravings includes Frederic Remington, George Catlin, Karl Bodmer, John Mix Stanley, Seth Eastman, Felix Darley, Peter Rindesbacher, and William M. Cary. Also in the exhibit is an original “Map Illustrating the Extermination of the American Bison” by William T. Hornaday, the Smithsonian scholar who wrote the 1889 definitive report on the specie’s near extirpation.

The exhibit is free to public in the museum’s Adelstein Gallery from May 31st through October 5th, 2025.

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