BOURGEOIS HOUSE & STARR GALLERY

From the Great Falls Tribune, May 27, 2012

Old Fort Benton opens Bourgeois House, Starr Gallery

Written by

DAVID MURRRAY

The Bourgeois House at the fort in Fort Benton houses the Starr Gallery. TRIBUNE PHOTO/LARRY BECKNER Fay Todd, left, talks about a Bob Scriver bronze sculpture with Jeffrey Alpizar in the Starr Gallery at the Bourgeois House in Fort Benton Saturday. TRIBUNE PHOTO/LARRY BECKNER

In late May 1855, Andrew Dawson, the American Fur Company's chief trader at Fort Benton, wrote in his daily log, "cloudy, rainy, disagreeable day."

On the next day Dawson wrote, "fort full of water."

The next, "another rainy day."

And then on May 26, exactly 157 years before the River and Plains Society dedicated the newest addition to the old Fort Benton museum complex, Dawson wrote, "more showers."

The assembled audience chuckled as River and Plains Society Board Member Randy Morger read from the old logs. Outside, a drizzling rain neatly echoed Dawson's observations from a century and a half ago.

Some things never change.

Inside too, little seemed to have changed from the fur trading days. Trade blankets and powder horns lined the shelves at the trade store. A buffalo head kept watch over the assembled audience, staring out from above a cracking fire in the adobe fireplace.

After the dignitaries had given their speeches, and rounds of heart-felt applause had been showered upon the many people who made the dedication possible, the audience was invited to step out into the rain, cross the inner courtyard and enter old fort's newest addition.

After more than 15 years of planning, preparation and finally construction, the Bourgeois House and the Starr Gallery of Western Art are at last completed. Saturday marked their grand opening.

Standing on the exact site from which the American Fur Company once operated a vast frontier trading empire, the Bourgeois House and Starr Gallery are certain to delight anyone with an interest in authentic western history and and appreciation for rare western art.

"Come on in and see what we have to offer," said River and Plains trustee Jack Lepley as he invited the crowd in.

The Bourgeois House is a faithful recreation of the office, living quarters and council room of the Bourgeois, the title given to the chief trader at each of the American Fur Company's trading posts. And contained within this important structural tribute to Montana's past is another, equally impressive treasure — the Starr Gallery of Western Art.

For its inaugural exhibit, the Starr Gallery is featuring 18 sculptures by famed Montana artist Bob Scriver, rare Karl Bodmer prints contributed by the Starr Foundation, and John Mix Stanley's original portrait of Alexander Culbertson, founder of Fort Benton in 1846.

"Authenticity, culture and history — what better place than Fort Benton to find that?" asked Pam Gosink from the Montana Office of Tourism. "Congratulations on a job well done."

SCRIVER BRONZES IN FORT BENTON

From the Great Falls Tribune,  May 23, 2012

These are the bronzes that were held in Edmonton at the Royal Alberta Museum.

Historical addition, museum to open in Fort Benton

This small Scriver bronze entitled "No More Buffalo" is the namesake sculpture of a 53 piece series that will be displayed at the Starr Gallery of Western Art over the next several years. PHOTO COURTESY OF RIVER AND PLAINS SOCIETY

DEDICATION TO BE HELD SATURDAY

The Bourgeois House and the Starr Gallery of Western Art will be dedicated during a public ceremony in Fort Benton at 1 p.m. Saturday, May 26. Admission is free to the public, who also can visit all other Fort Benton museums and historic landmarks that day for free, all courtesy of the River and Plains Society, which oversees the fort's restoration.

Funding for the reconstruction of the Bourgeois House and the Starr Gallery was provided by the Montana Office of Tourism's Tourism Infrastructure Investment Program, Fay Todd and family and the Starr Foundation.

Fort Benton "saw more romance, tragedy and vigorous life than many a city a hundred times its size and ten times its age" wrote historian Hiram Chittenden in his 1903 book on the Missouri River steamboat era.

The fur trappers, Native Americans, river boats, buffalo hunters, gold miners and whiskey traders who made Fort Benton a center of commerce and culture in the Rocky Mountain West have long ago faded from living memory. But next Saturday, May 26, a new addition to the museum complex at old Fort Benton will be dedicated, faithfully restoring some of the sights and imagery of what was once the innermost port in the world.

The public is invited to attend opening ceremonies for the Bourgeois House, a historical re-creation of what served as the headquarters and living area for the American Fur Company's chief trader at the remote Montana Territory outpost.

"That's what the American Fur Company called the chief traders at all their forts — the Bourgeois," explained Sharalee Smith, director of the River and Plains Society Fort Restoration Committee.

Built from brick modeled on artifacts preserved from the original 1850s adobe fort, the Bourgeois House is the first structure to be added to the Old Fort's re-creation in 10 years.

"When we first started out back in 1995, we built the trade store and then the warehouse and the blacksmith's/carpenter's shop," said Smith.

The old fort also includes the original 1847 blockhouse, the oldest building in Montana still on its original foundation. According to Smith, the original two-story Bourgeois House was designed to impress upon its visitors the wealth and prestige of the American Fur Company.

"The far left of the building's ground floor was the Bourgeois' office," she said. "The remaining two-thirds of the ground floor was a huge room they called 'The Council Room.' When Indian chiefs and other important people would visit, that's where the American Fur Company officials would entertain them.

"Upstairs, going up the fancy porch, was the Bourgeois' living quarters. Then the other rooms going down the other two-thirds of the upper story were apartments for the clerks. The educated guys got to live in nice little apartments, each with their own doorway."

While the re-creations of the Bourgeois' office and living quarters are impressive in their own right, the Bourgeois House is far more than simply an interpretive center for a bygone fur trading post. Also on the main floor of the Bourgeois House is the new Starr Gallery of Western Art. The inaugural exhibition for this important addition to Montana's cultural legacy is called "The Land, The People, The Artists' Vision."

Headlining the new exhibit are 18 statues by Bob Scriver. Cast during a 20-year period beginning in 1959, the "No More Buffalo" series represents some of the Montana sculptor's most important work.

According to a 1998 interview with Scriver by the Los Angeles Times, in 1959 the chairman of the Blackfeet Tribal Business Council asked Scriver to create 12 statues illustrating tribal culture. The challenge prompted him to fashion 53 statues in bronze, plaster or fiberglass depicting 1,200 years of Blackfeet history. The Provincial Museum for Alberta in Edmonton, Canada, stored the works for more than a decade, and they have rarely been displayed publicly.

"The whole collection was returned to the Montana State Historical Society last fall," explained Smith. "Some of these statues are huge and weigh well over 700 pounds."

Over the coming years, the Starr Gallery intends to rotate through the remaining pieces of the "No More Buffalo" collection, eventually displaying all 53 works in the series.

Also on display starting Saturday will be a collection of rare Karl Bodmer prints detailing Montana's scenery and Indian cultures of the 1830s, and an original portrait of Fort Benton's founder, Alexander Culbertson, likely painted in the 1870s by western artist John Mix Stanley.

"The Stanley portrait is the only original work by that famous western painter known to exist in Montana," said John G. Lepley, executive director and curator for the River and Plains Society. "And the prints from Swiss painter Bodmer's travels with Prince Maximilian to the interior of North America still stand today as the most accurate and detailed pictures of Native American life during that era."

THE RUSSELL IS COMING !!

THE RUSSELL IS COMING !!

Around here the surest sign of spring is not the groundhog but rather the birthday of an old cowboy artist namedCharlie Russell who created a archetype while meaning only to live in the West. The Great Falls Ad Club decided to organize a celebratory art auction on the weekend closest to his birthday every year and that proved to be a magnet for a number of intersecting forces. In the immediately past years the forces have collided and reconfigured. Now there is an auction, but the Ad Club has nothing to do with it, while the “shadow” auction called “March in Montana” continues unchanged. You can peruse the offerings of both online: http://cmrussell.org/the-russell and

http://www.marchinmontana.com/ Jay Contwayhttp://www.jaycontway.com/

is also continuing his simultaneous show (Jay Contway & Friends) but doesn’t put a catalog online.

Lots of people speculate about what’s happening, especially behind the scenes where the CM Russell Museum has just united their two Boards of Directors, one local and one national. All the drama of horse rustling and backroom gambling deals! Of course, buying art IS gambling, esp. at an auction. Bob Scriver has been completely eliminated from the remuda of the Russell. Previous directors would have liked to get his little skulls off the door pulls and even dispense with the big portrait of the artist that Scriver made. He afflicted them while alive and bugs them even more now that he’s dead. I try to help.

There are Scriver bronzes in the “March in Montana” auction, the smaller ceramic-shell castings he made late in life to sell through entrepreneurs who were fond of series so as to encourage collecting the whole bunch. These pieces are # 322, a bucking horse at rodeo; #223, a standing mountain man; #324, a trapper on showshoes; #325, a prospector panning; #594, a mountain man on horseback; #617, a standing elk. This last might be the one sold to help acquire the painting of an elk that Charlie made for the Elks Club so it would stay in Montana. #489, an Indian woman on a horse with a travois, children, and two dogs, is identified as a Joe Beeler bronze but I think it’s actually a Scriver. As the staff gets younger and more separated from on-the-ground Western life, they make more mistakes.

Of the works by people I knew and liked who were connected to Bob Scriver, there were fewer than usual works, but some persist. Ned Jacobhttp://www.nedjacob.com/ has a nice little sketch (#333) of an Indian head with a bandanna. Paul Dyck is represented by two remarkable paintings: #342, a circle of lodges (tipis) and #342, some kind of ceremonial bird. He is an abstract painter using classical techniques, very haunting. If I had money to spend, I might buy #415 which is a Russell Chatham stone lithograph, also haunting.

Ned Jacob is my age, but Russell Chatham was born on the very same day. We are an age cohort and over seventy now. When I came to Browning we were the younglings. Ace Powell, alcoholic and garrulous, energized us with his predictions of the future and he is well represented in the March in Montana auction becauseVan Kirke Nelson took him -- well, under his wing would be the nice way to put it -- and accumulated a LOT of his work. But there really are not a lot of Montana homegrown artists that I recognize.

There are two categories of objects that should be thoroughly researched before bidding. One is the Native American artifacts which are controversial in terms of politics and very often were stolen at some point between their creation and acquisition. In addition, many artifakes are out there and some of them are so well-done that they are nearly undetectable as phony. Of course, if they’re that good, why worry? Why not just accept them?

The concept of pedigree is not well-known but it is relevant to artifacts and also to bronzes. With modern methods and materials, it is probably easier to make an undetectable but unauthorized phony bronze casting than to make a solidly-beaded vest. In fact, some of the glamorous ceremonial shirts that occasionally come through auctions sell for thousands, more than many bronzes. Originally, back in the days of Rodin and the perfecting of lost wax casting the process was so exacting and risky that Bob and I nearly killed ourselves and our crew in the Sixties learning how to do it. Now you can just buy a low-risk kit for ceramic shell casting. There’s a definite difference in the quality, but most people can’t detect it.

Western art is an interesting category because it combines high, sophisticated works attached to high income crowds in erudite circles, very curated and controlled, with wild-ass popular creations done from the heart for personal satisfaction. Then there are the cross-overs, which would be Charlie Russell from a relatively high-toned bourgeois family in the mid-west who barely managed to catch the tail of the big open range life. In fact, he missed the bison and the pre-rez Indians. He did his best for the Metis/Cree-Chippewa people who had no rez and often visited the reservations. Some of his drawings are sharp social criticism.

Now it begins to be realized that he was considerably more sophisticated in technique than people think. He spent time in New York City, learning, and artists from back east came to visit, bringing their advice and techniques with them. The same happened with Bob Scriver. So now there are two directions of influence traveling between the “grassroots” spontaneous art and the sophisticated circles. Maybe it’s time for another book that isn’t focused on how much money can be made.

In the meantime interested parties should at least educate their eyes on the catalogues of auctions and, if possible, look carefully at the original works with as much coaching as they can glean from publications or from websites likewww.askart.com which manages an index of artists and information about them.

For a reality check, here’s a blog about the planetary art world:

http://www.artsjournal.com/realcleararts/2012/03/art-by-the-numbers-a-new-report-on-the-market-in-2011.html

WESTERN ART, LIT AND HISTORY: Transition

WESTERN ART, LIT AND HISTORY

"Transition," a bronze sculpture by Robert MacFie Scriver, portraying generations of Blackfeet.

It was originally meant to be an heroic-sized (life-size plus one-fifth) monument in Browning.

The best of Bob Scriver’s work is finally coming online in a way we would never have anticipated. He hated computers in general, picked a BIG fight with me when I wanted to put his autobiography (the one he was writing himself on legal pads) on a little all-in-one early Macintosh I was using in Heart Butte. He never would have imagined the Internet. I’m suspecting that this casting (above) was made in the Sixties in our own Bighorn Foundry that we built in the backyard and that probably either Carl Cree Medicine or I patined it.

The early auctions began, rather transparently, as ways to clear out the warehoused art stock of certain persons under the guise of helping the CMR Museum or Indians or some other cause. When they came around to ask Bob to donate a piece of art, he was outraged. (“I’m broke already!!”) But one was frozen out of the buyer “social classes” if one didn’t, because the auction was also an important bonding event for collectors and their supplicants. So he invented the Scriver Buffalo Skull Award, which didn’t cost much to cast and wasn’t going to be affected by the general state of art sales.

Now, of course, everything has changed, but Bob was right to be wary of auctions, because now there are many auctions, the generation that was betting on which artist was going to be the next Charlie Russell is ancient or dead, and there is a Charlie Russell wannabe under every bush, painting away as fast as they can. Aside from that, works go through auctions back east where people know nothing but abstract expressionism or conceptual art and no one knows anything about Charlie -- they have a vague trace memory of Frederic Remington.

In some ways, bronze sculptures have become as much victims of technology as books have been undercut by electronics. Ceramic shell casting is so cheap and easy, with results that are so indistinguishable from fine lost wax casting (except by experts), that everyone casts everything, slaps a store-bought slick-as-plastic patina on it (maybe in COLORS !!), and sells it for trinket prices. Worse, they aren’t very particular what they make molds off of -- copyright or not -- and they aren’t particularly good at making molds.

It gets worse: with laser technology, you can stand a horse in front of a machine and have a computer-recorded exact replica of the horse without the intervention of human judgment at all. Is this art? Is an upside-down urinal art? It’s up to the buyer.

Personally, I think it is worse to have a monument-quality sculpture cast by the artist by the same lost-wax method that Rodin used, go at auction for $800. And worse than that, I resent the work being carelessly described by some racist shallow catalogue maker as a “buck, squaw and papoose.” These are portraits. Chewing Black Bone, the man sitting down, was a dignified ceremonialist, said by some to be the last warrior to have taken a scalp. He was blind, probably from trachoma. In summer he lived in his lodge on the Mad Plume ranch, mending his own moccasins and remembering the old days. He was a friend and informant of James Willard Schultz, who called him “Ahku Pitsu.” I only met him once, early in the Sixties.

Mae Williamson, the woman in the middle, was a dignified and sophisticated woman who was married to a white lawyer. (Later she had other husbands, all Blackfeet.) The dress she is wearing, embellished with the eyeteeth of elk (count’em and see how many elk it took), is worth thousands of dollars. The boy is “Tomorrow.” We’ve lost the name of the boy who posed. Maybe he’ll see this, recognize himself, and tell us how he turned out. He’d be a grandfather by now, fifty years older. None of this is romantic foofoo stuff invented by a Hollywood-hypnotized story spinner. These are just facts.

I complain a good deal about the Industrial Cowboy Art Cartel, who try to lock up the value of their own acquisitions by whatever means they can. Wheelin’ and dealin’, we say. In these new phenomena of slice ‘n dice, bring-’em-faster auctions the buyers are often not present (they buy via the internet), no informed persons explain what the context of the pieces are, and everyone is monitoring a ticker-tape website that shows what the artist’s work sold for last time. They are incredibly destructive to the reputation and value of Western American art.

But at least it is not the racist divide that is presently between those who love Western art, Western literature, and Western history because they are essentially a conquerer’s account of the empire of America with a nod to the valor and glamour of the “worthy opponents” -- as opposed to the flipside: real people’s history of previously invisible kinds. (Example: Mian Situ who suddenly makes real the Chinese in the West.) This divide is in all three contexts and it is decimating the organizations devoted to the fields, especially those that include with the amateur aficionadoes some serious academics who have been alert to the re-framing of history by people like Howard Zinn. Young people are now quite different in outlook and opposed to exploitation. It may be that the buckskinners and cavalry re-enactors have smudges of fascistic elitism and triumphalism. The idea makes them so defensive that no one wants to go near the topic.

Right-wingers. God love ‘em. Bob Scriver was among ‘em. Not that the forces of Red Power didn’t do their best to change him from an innocent to an entrenched opponent. This man grew up thinking he WAS Indian and got pushed out of the category by Indian people who hated the FBI -- who did their best to reinforce hate, even though the FBI was organized in the first place to oppose the many murders that came out of the great early oil strikes in Kansas. Wounded Knee was Wounded Pride. So the foxes sit quietly in front of the hen house with their tails curled around their well-polished wingtips while the weasels come and go.

I’m not meaning to accuse the amateur aficionadoes, who are off creating sonnets that ask “Why Gone Those Times?” I’m not ignoring the young rascals who say, “Good riddance.” It’s the commodifiers I’m after. In the meantime, sales everywhere are really miserable.

"BRONZE INSIDE AND OUT"

http://freebookspot.es/Comments.aspx?Element_ID=208488

http://avaxhome.ws/ebooks/biography/1552382273.html

http://ebookee.org/Bronze-Inside-and-Out-A-Biographical-Memoir-of-Bob-Scriver_1555379.html

If you've been putting off reading "Bronze Inside and Out" because of the cost, you might be happy to know it has somehow showed up on the Internet as a free download.

This is entirely without my knowledge, consent or permission. I hardly know what to think about it. If you read the book, I WOULD like to know what YOU think about the book.

ESTATE DISPERSAL: SAD OPPORTUNITY

This note arrived today from a friend:

Dear Mary:

Thought you might be interested to see this private collection of Bob Scriver material for sale on eBay.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Robert-Scriver-bob-Scriver-large-collection-see-description-one-kind-lot-/160667493681?pt=Art_Sculpture&hash=item2568876531

I wondered if one of the notes listed in the sale, about an item having been stolen, might have been from you. The author is not stated.

The sale appears to be from a Montana estate.

* * * * *

This is the answer I sent back:

Uh, oh. This means either that Billy McCurdy badly needs money or that his estate is being distributed. He was about my age (70 +) and these things were from Bob's early life, before I came. Billy helped build the Scriver Museum of Montana Wildlife and later became the "manager" for Woody Herman as well as playing in the band. I always wondered a bit about the personal relationships. Bob's feelings for Billy were quite intense. Bob left him $10,000, which is what he did for each of his grandkids -- his children were dead. No one else inherited cash. I wondered whether he were Bob's son but the timing is wrong. Bob also left Billy his first battered old cornet, but Billy sent it back. I've tried to contact him, but no dice. The last address I had was in Minneapolis.

$20,000 is wildly optimistic in a world where a “Lone Cowboy” like mine (cast probably by Bob and I and patined by me) recently sold for $800. That's eight hundred. I would have guessed the value at $10,000. Auctions are two-edged swords. But if a person were a collector with an eye, well-informed, now would be the time to prepare for the next wave of popularity.

It's not the actual casting of the bison skull that was stolen. There was a guy who cruised the prairie souvenir shops picking up stuff and making molds of it. He made a mold of this skull and sold it far and wide. You can tell his castings because they're slightly squashed and blurred. This was a tourist item and the idea itself was much copied. The most resourceful version was an assortment of skulls and an assortment of birds with screws on the bottom so you mix and match with the skulls. They came in a molded, velvet-lined case. Not a bad idea!

I'd better look for Billy's obit.

Prairie Mary

"MASAI MORAN, KILLER OF SIMBA"

This information comes from a website called "Art Fact"

There is a photo at the website. I couldn't get it to migrate. This is the url for the list of Scriver bronzes that have been auctioned. If it doesn't work, just go to www.artfact.com and use their search function for Scriver.

http://www.artfact.com/catalog/searchLots.cfm?scp=p&catalogRef=&shw=50&ord=2&ad=DESC&img=0&alF=1&houseRef=&houseLetter=A&artistRef=&areaID=&countryID=®ionID=&stateID=&fdt=0&tdt=0&fr=0&to=0&wa=Scriver&wp=&wo=&nw=&upcoming=0&rp=&hi=&rem=FALSE&cs=0

Auctions Auctioneer Directory
Braswell Galleries
06/21/10 Fine Estate, Art & 20th Century Modern
Auction Catalog
SCRIVER, BOB (AMERICAN, 1914-1999): Cast bronze. "Masai Moran, Killer of Simba." Signed, dated 1996, and titled on the base.

Auction House: Braswell Galleries Auction Location: Norwalk , CT, USA
Title of auction: 06/21/10 Fine Estate, Art & 20th Century Modern
Auction Date: June 21, 2010
Description: SCRIVER, BOB (AMERICAN, 1914-1999): Cast bronze. "Masai Moran, Killer of Simba." Signed, dated 1996, and titled on the base.
H. 30."

Artfact is the world's largest auction database!
More than 67.4 million auction price results representing over $254.6 billion in value
Includes price results and upcoming art for sale at auction for over 500,000 artists

I only saw this sculpture once while Bob was working on it in plastilene. We shared an attraction to Kenya and all the stories that came out of it.

Looking on down the list, I see Bob's self-portrait described as "Bust of a cowboy with hat inscribed © Bob Scriver / 1975 / 9/35 Bronze" (on the back of the figure)

"Lot 746: BRONZE MODEL OF A STANDING HORSE Signed "RS". Attributed to Robert Scriver. Height 2¾"" is NOT a Scriver bronze. He never signed as RS and the horse is not in his style.