April 6th - National Cowboy & Western Museum

From its vantage point on Persimmon Hill in Oklahoma City, the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum commands a rare view of the American West. In half a century it has grown from a Hall of Fame honoring the American cowboy to a world-class institution housing extraordinary collections of art, artifacts and archival materials.
Although western fine art has long been its primary focus, the museum today collects a broad array of material that reflects the variety of peoples, cultures, and historical currents found in the West

It is an amazing place, both for it's construction and for the items dwelling within. Your first impression is created by viewing an 18 foot high, four ton sculpture by James Earl Fraser, called "The End of The Trail".
As you continue to wind your way through the multitude of rooms in the museum, you learn more and more of the history, art and life of the peoples who populated the Old West. There are extensive displays of paintings, sculptures, clothing, guns and even a reproducton of an old west town, complete with a cat in the upstairs window!!!

Real Western Wear: Beaded Gauntlets from the William P. Healey Collection
For centuries, American Indian artists have embroidered porcupine quills, bird quills and moose hair onto a variety of objects and surfaces. After the arrival of glass beads and silk thread, Native artists soon integrated these new materials into existing traditions. Despite being foreign goods, these imported items soon became identifiers of American Indian identity and aesthetics to both Native and non-Native people. Euroamerican leather gloves were among the objects adorned with Native beadwork and worn in both Indian and non-Indian communities. Indian women found that settlers desired all of the buckskin work gloves that they could produce. By the late 19th century, beaded gauntlets gloves had become necessary components of the western cowboys' fancy dress wardrobe and favorite items of eastern "dudes" who kept them as souvenirs of their western adventures. The numerous rodeo and western pageants founded after 1910 further fueled demand for the gauntlets
Real Western Wear presents 73 pairs of decorated gloves from the collection of William P. Healey, and reflects the design diversity and technical virtuosity of Plains, Plateau and Great Basin Indian artists who produced these singular objects from the 1890s through the 1940s
Doing time!!!! The jail cage from the old western town holds a new resident! I wonder just what his crime was!!!???? Hope there is no lynching crowd outside, because I need him to drive the motorhome!!! Just like in the old west, we put all our possessions in our travel coach and head out across the country, boldly going where lots have gone before!!!! Of course, our "roughing it" doesn't hold a patch on what the pioneers went through on the Oregon Trail!
A collection of awards from rodeo events. The section dedicated to the rodeo cowboy is extensive and very interesting.
What cowboy collection would be complete without the cowboys and cowgirls of movie and television, with "The Duke" and Roy and Dale Rogers being my favorites. The Western Performers Gallery is extensive and very interesting.
Outside the museum, the grounds are beautiful, with a lovely rambling stream filled with beautiful koi. There are many more sculptures outside, and lots of tributes to the animals who served the cowboys and rodeo stars.

A beautiful cardinal decided to honor us with a serenade! What a lovely fellow!
Next stop -- Memphis!