Readers of a national weekly news magazine voted the Whitney Western Art Museum in Cody the best museum in the country.
Curator Susan Barnett said she was excited to see Newsweek readers rank the museum higher than institutions like the MoMA, the Art Institute of Chicago, among others on the list.
“I think people really love this museum because of its scale, because of the way that the Whitney intersects with all of the other museums in the building. I think our greatness is all of us together and how we have this prismatic view on the West from all of the different museums and their different perspectives,” she said.
Assistant Curator Ashlea Espinal said being nominated best museum shows that audiences are recognizing the innovative work the Whitney has been doing.
“Oftentimes mid-size or smaller museums like us particularly rural museums, we’re pretty far out there, we are only 50 miles from Yellowstone National Park, we’re not frequented as much as maybe like MoMA or Denver or Chicago, but obviously people are still engaged and still really like the artwork,” she said.
Whitney Western Art Museum curators recently updated the gallery so works by Native American artists are seen at its entrance and reinstalled the Yellowstone National Park section. The museum is the first in Wyoming to adopt the Bloomberg Connects app, which features audio content and more about the collections and special exhibits.
Built in 1959, the Whitney Western Art Museum is one of the founding museums of the Buffalo Bill Center of the West.
