Wyoming Minute

The latest Cody Firearms acquisition is a set of 3D printed firearms. Danny Michael, the associate curator of the museum, said one of them made national news at one point. 

The Whitney Western Art Museum commissioned a painting for the Invisible Boundaries Exhibition. The exhibition explored Yellowstone National Park’s animal migrations. 

James Prosek ended up painting what is now titled, “Yellowstone Composition No. 1” It is very big at 120 by 120 inches. 

Winter counts are recordings of the Lakota tribal history. The Plains Indian Museum at the Buffalo Bill Center of the West has one winter count that is known as the lone dog winter count. That’s because Lone Dog was the last known keep of this tribal history. It’s a calendar representation of important events between 1800 and 1871.

The McCracken Research Library at the Buffalo Bill Center of the West receives many gifts, donations and loans from patrons. The staff has to go through all the collections to catalog them and also find out what’s in them. 

The Draper Museum Raptor Experience will be 10 years old in 2021. In honor, we are featuring the 11 raptors in the program.

Salem is an American Kestrel, which is a falcon species. It's the smallest Falcon species in North America. At one point it was one of the most common raptors across north Central and South America. But their numbers are actually in decline across most of North America. Scientists are researching the decline in an effort to figure out why. 

Not many American impressionists depicted the West. Most painted the East coast and Europe. But Karen McWhorter, the curator of the Whitney Western Art Museum, said one American impressionist, John Henry Twachtman, painted a series of Yellowstone National Park. 

Did you think there’s any connection between baseball and firearm production? Turns out, Hillerich and Bradsby Co. and M1 Carbines have a little in common, said Danny Michael, the associate curator of the Cody Firearms Museum.

The Draper Museum Raptor Experience will be 10 years old in 2021. In honor of its anniversary, Museum Minute is featuring the 11 raptors in the program. The Raptor Experience is a live raptor education program that shares the region’s wild animals with visitors to the Buffalo Bill Center of the West.

Suli is a turkey vulture. She has no disabilities, but she is a human imprint. Brandon Lewis, the live raptor program assistant, said that means she was raised by people and doesn’t have much knowledge of how to survive as a turkey vulture. Lewis said Suli was found in a barn between haystacks.

The Cody Firearms Museum has one of the only three 1910 silencers that survived. It’s on the Springfield Model 1903 Bolt Action Rifle. 

The Plains Indian Museum has a collection of pressed plants that were used for medicinal uses.

The book includes the tall fringed blue bell. Hunter Old Elk, the Plains Indian Museum curatorial assistant, said it’s a mountain flower. 

The Draper Museum Raptor Experience will be 10 years old in 2021. In honor of its anniversary, Museum Minute is featuring the 11 raptors in the program. The Raptor Experience is a live raptor education program that shares the region’s wild animals with visitors to the Buffalo Bill Center of the West.

Hayabusa is a Peregrine falcon. She has a different injury than most of the other birds in the experience. Haya has ligament damage instead of a fracture that didn’t heal properly. 

Sally James Farnham was a sculptor from a prominent family in upstate New York. Farnham didn’t start sculpting until she was 32.

In the late 1930s, the U.S. Army selected the M-1 Garand as its new service rifle. But it turns out that it was quite a controversial decision. 

From 1922 to 1934, there was a college preparatory school for boys down the south fork in Cody. The Valley Ranch Boarding School was founded by Larry Larom and Winthrop Brooks. 

Charles Carey Rumsey was an American sculptor who is most well known for depicting polo players and equestrian subjects. He was a pretty well known polo player himself. But occasionally, Rumsey went down the Western theme, depicting bison and horses. 

The Draper Museum Raptor Experience will be 10 years old in 2021. In honor of its anniversary, Museum Minutes are featuring the 11 raptors in the program. The Raptor Experience is a live raptor education program that shares the region's wild animals with visitors to the Buffalo Bill Center of the West.

Museum curators are expected to have an in-depth knowledge of everything in the collections. 

“We try to put on a very good appearance of that when we give tours,” said Danny Michael, the assistant curator of the Cody Firearms Museum. “But it's not always the case.”

Vincent Mercaldo was a collector of Western imagery. But he was also a painter and an artist. Samantha Harper, the archivist at the McCracken Research Library, said he would manipulate many images.

The Draper Museum Raptor Experience will be 10 years old in 2021. In honor, the museum minutes are featuring the 11 raptors in the program. The raptor experience is a live raptor education program that shares the regions wild animals with visitors to the Buffalo Bill Center of the West.

Tommy Wayne Cannon, or more commonly known as T.C. Cannon, was Native American artist of the 20th century. He was an enrolled member of the Kiowa Tribe. Karen McWhorter, the curator of the Whitney Western Art Museum, said he played an important role in the development of contemporary Native art.

The color red is symbolic for many different cultures and movements. It has become associated with the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women (MMIW) movement, which hopes to increase awareness of the violence experienced by Indigenous women.

In the early 1900s, a new concealable pistol was created. The Palm Protector Pistol was a double action revolver, but Danny Michael, the assistant curator of the Cody Firearms Museum, said it didn’t really look like a conventional revolver.

Samantha Harper is an archivist at the Buffalo Bill Center of the West’s McCracken Research Library. This job means that Harper digs through documents, photography and books every day.

The Plains Indian Museum doesn't only collect art from the past. Rebecca West, the curator of the museum, said their job is also to collect contemporary art like those of John Isaiah Pepion, of the Blackfeet nation in northern Montana.

In the past, natural history museums sent staff and researchers on expeditions to collect specimens in the field. But when the Draper Natural History Museum officially opened its doors in the early 2000s, it wanted to try to avoid that practice.

Museum curators often receive public inquiries, and sometimes an outside person can be very helpful to gaining better insight on a painting or object in the museum. For Karen McWhorter, the curator of the Whitney Western Art Museum, a call from a professor made her look at George Catlin’s “Mandan-View of the Missouri Above the Village Whilst the Women and Children are Bathing.”

During World War I, while John Browning was working on a heavy machine gun that would use a .50 caliber cartridge, Cody Firearms Museum Assistant Curator Danny Michael said Winchester got the Army contract to create that cartridge.

In the early 1900s, Charles Clarke was a southern California teen runaway who worked setting up bowling pins. But his life changed in one moment, said Eric Rossborough, an associate librarian at the McCracken Research Library at the Buffalo Bill Center of the West.

Museums don’t only collect unique objects. Sometimes everyday objects are just as valuable. This is true for the Plains Indian Museum. For Hunter Old Elk, the museum’s curatorial assistant, those are some of her favorite objects in the collection.

The Charles Russell painting titled “When Law Dulls The Edge of Chance” depicts two North-West Mounted Police or Monty's disarming two horse thieves. Karen McWhorter, the curator of the Whitney Western Art Museum, said the painting has had many different names and one of those included the phrase “horse thieves”