Skip to main content
  • Home
  • About
  • Faculty Experts
  • For The Media
  • ’Cuse Conversations Podcast
  • Topics
    • Alumni
    • Events
    • Faculty
    • Students
    • All Topics
  • Contact
  • Submit
Arts & Culture
  • All News
  • Arts & Culture
  • Business & Economy
  • Campus & Community
  • Health & Society
  • Media, Law & Policy
  • STEM
  • Veterans
  • University Statements
  • Syracuse University Impact
  • |
  • The Peel
  • Athletics
Sections
  • All News
  • Arts & Culture
  • Business & Economy
  • Campus & Community
  • Health & Society
  • Media, Law & Policy
  • STEM
  • Veterans
  • University Statements
  • Syracuse University Impact
  • |
  • The Peel
  • Athletics
  • Home
  • About
  • Faculty Experts
  • For The Media
  • ’Cuse Conversations Podcast
  • Topics
    • Alumni
    • Events
    • Faculty
    • Students
    • All Topics
  • Contact
  • Submit
Arts & Culture

Professor Examines 200 Years of Western American Art

Friday, January 16, 2015, By Rob Enslin
Share
College of Arts and Sciences

More than 200 years of Western American art is the subject of a new book by a professor in the College of Arts and Sciences.

artamericanwestScott Manning Stevens, associate professor and director of Native American studies, is the author of “Art of the American West: The Haub Family Collection at Tacoma Art Museum” (Yale University Press, 2014). The book is published in association with the Tacoma Art Museum (TAM), which contains a new expansion devoted to works by historic and contemporary artists.

Stevens co-authored the book with Laura F. Fry, inaugural curator of Western American Art at TAM; and Peter H. Hassrick, director emeritus and senior scholar of the Buffalo Bill Center of the West in Cody, Wyo.

“We examine ideas of American identity over time, delving into storytelling and mythmaking and the depiction of the vast American landscape,” says Stevens, whose expertise includes diplomatic and cultural strategies of resistance among North American Indians. “We also look at how concepts of the West—real and imagined—have changed and evolved, while still influencing us today.”

“Art of the American West” surveys the entire Haub Family Collection, featuring more than 320 color reproductions of iconic and previously unpublished works, dating back to the 1790s. The book also highlights more than 140 artists, ranging from acknowledged masters, such as Frederic Remington, Thomas Moran, Charles M. Russell and Georgia O’Keeffe; to underexplored talent, such as Walter Ufer and Kevin Red Star.

Among the topics and themes represented are American culture, American politics, land conservation and Manifest Destiny. Special emphasis is placed on the depiction of Native Americans, cowboys and western landscapes.

“The recent and contemporary pieces shed a modern light on Western cultures and challenge long-held myths and assumptions about the American West,” Stevens adds.

Scott Manning Stevens

Scott Manning Stevens

Lavishly illustrated, “Art of the American West” includes essays by some of today’s leading scholars, including Kimberly Disney and Margaret E. Bullock, both of whom work at TAM as the first Haub Fellow and as curator of collections and special exhibitions, respectively.

A citizen of the Akwesasne Mohawk Nation, Stevens joined the Syracuse University faculty more than a year ago, after serving as both adjunct professor of American studies at the University of Notre Dame and director of the D’Arcy McNickle Center for American Indian and Indigenous Studies at the Newberry Library in Chicago. He also has held teaching positions at the University at Buffalo, Arizona State University and Harvard University, where he earned a Ph.D. and master’s degree in English.

An expert on Indigenous perspectives of museums and comparative Indigenous histories, Stevens is co-editor of “Why You Can’t Teach United States History Without American Indians” (The University of North Carolina Press, 2015), due out in April.

 

 

  • Author
  • Faculty Experts

Rob Enslin

  • Scott Manning Stevens

  • Recent
  • Syracuse Stage Hosts Inaugural Julie Lutz New Play Festival
    Wednesday, May 28, 2025, By News Staff
  • Timur Hammond’s ‘Placing Islam’ Receives Journal’s Honorable Mention
    Tuesday, May 27, 2025, By News Staff
  • Expert Available to Discuss DOD Acceptance of Qatari Jet
    Thursday, May 22, 2025, By Vanessa Marquette
  • Syracuse University 2025-26 Budget to Include Significant Expansion of Student Financial Aid
    Wednesday, May 21, 2025, By News Staff
  • Light Work Opens New Exhibitions
    Wednesday, May 21, 2025, By News Staff

More In Arts & Culture

Syracuse Stage Hosts Inaugural Julie Lutz New Play Festival

Syracuse Stage is pleased to announce that the inaugural Julie Lutz New Play Festival will be held at the theatre this June. Formerly known as the Cold Read Festival of New Plays, the festival will feature a work-in-progress reading and…

Light Work Opens New Exhibitions

Light Work has two new exhibitions, “The Archive as Liberation” and “2025 Light Work Grants in Photography, that will run through Aug. 29. “The Archive as Liberation” The exhibition is on display in the Kathleen O. Ellis Gallery at Light…

Spelman College Glee Club to Perform at Return to Community: A Sunday Gospel Jazz Service June 29

As the grand finale of the 2025 Syracuse International Jazz Fest, the Spelman College Glee Club of Atlanta will perform at Hendricks Chapel on Sunday, June 29. The Spelman College Glee Club, now in its historic 100th year, is the…

Alumnus, Visiting Scholar Mosab Abu Toha G’23 Wins Pulitzer Prize for New Yorker Essays

Mosab Abu Toha G’23, a graduate of the M.F.A. program in creative writing in the College of Arts and Sciences and a current visiting scholar at Syracuse University, has been awarded the 2025 Pulitzer Prize for a series of essays…

School of Architecture Faculty Pablo Sequero Named Winner of 2025 Architectural League Prize

School of Architecture faculty member Pablo Sequero’s firm, salazarsequeromedina, has been named to the newest cohort of winners in the biennial Architectural League Prize for Young Architects + Designers, one of North America’s most prestigious awards for young practitioners. “An…

Subscribe to SU Today

If you need help with your subscription, contact sunews@syr.edu.

Connect With Us

  • X
  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • Youtube
  • LinkedIn
Social Media Directory

For the Media

Find an Expert Follow @SyracuseUNews
  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • Youtube
  • LinkedIn
  • @SyracuseU
  • @SyracuseUNews
  • Social Media Directory
  • Accessibility
  • Privacy
  • Campus Status
  • Syracuse.edu
© 2025 Syracuse University News. All Rights Reserved.