NY Times looks at Western exhibit by DAM director

The New York Times reported on an exhibit of Western bronzes co-organized by the Thomas Brent Smith, Director of the Denver Art Museum's Petrie Institute of Western Art..

Excerpt:

The art of the American West has long been honored in the states whose history it records, but it hasn’t always been accepted in the larger art world. Thirty years ago, it was often seen as an out-of-touch genre, fed by a love of nostalgia and history.

But today, according to Thomas Brent Smith, the director of the Denver Art Museum’s Petrie Institute of Western American Art, scholarship is creating a renewed appreciation for the field. As evidence, he points to “The American West in Bronze, 1850-1925,” at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York from Dec. 18 to April 13 before traveling to his own institution and the Nanjing Museum in China.

Read the rest here.