Yellowstone Art Museum

Regional historic photographer L.A. Huffman is well represented in the Yellowstone Art Museum's permanent collection.

The Montana Collection, with 1,925 objects, emphasizes Montana artists from the 1940s to the present.  Anne Appleby, Rudy Autio, John Buck, Deborah Butterfield, Robert DeWeese, Tracy Linder, Richard Notkin, Harold Schlotzhauer, Jaune Quick-to-See Smith, Bently Spang, Bill Stockton, Dennis Voss, Peter Voulkos, Ted Waddell, and Patrick Zentz are leading artists represented.  An important sub-collection, the work of early Montana Modernist Isabelle Johnson, numbers 826 paintings and works on paper. 

Isabelle Johnson
Pilot and Index Peaks, Wyoming
1952
Oil on canvas
26" x 34"
Accession no. 1995.015
Gift of Carol L. Cooper Ferguson, David L. Cooper, Joanne L. Morrill; in memory of their parents, Lyle and Connie Cooper

The Poindexter Collection of New York Abstract Expressionist art came to the Yellowstone Art Museum in several lots over many years from the family of George and Elinor Poindexter. In the 1940s, George Poindexter developed a passion for abstract art that began with confusion about the new trends in art that was so powerful that it drove him to learn, understand, and champion this era of art, the first in American history that has tremendous influence on artists abroad.  George Poindexter's deep ties to Montana led him to wish to bring this intellectually rich work to a region of the world that he believed would benefit. 

Poindexter gifts enrich both the Yellowstone Art Museum and the Montana Historical Society in Helena.  In Billings, the Poindexter collections number 382 works of which just over half are paintings and the balance works on paper.  Artists represented include Robert Adler, Nell Blaine, Herman Cherry, Robert DeNiro Sr., Earl Kerkam, Robert Natkin, Felix Ruvolo, Hyde Solomon, Norah Speyer, Albert Stadler, Joseph Stefanelli, Teiji Takai, Jack Tworkov, David Von Schlegell, James Weeks, Emerson Woelffer, and Manoucher Yektai.

A well illustrated catalog on the Poindexter collection, The Most Difficult Journey: The Poindexter Collections of American Modernist Painting, is available in the Yellowstone Art Museum's store.

View nearly 200 of Will James's works from our collection on Montana Memory Project website.

A Canadian who began his life in the saddle as a teenager in western Canada, Will James knew the ways of the cowboy trade inside out. A natural storyteller and observant draftsman, James turned to a career as a writer and illustrator about 1920. Between 1922 and 1942, Scribner's published nearly two dozen books written and illustrated by James. The Billings area was home base for him between 1926 and 1942. This painting was published on the cover of Lone Cowboy, a fictionalized autobiography reprinted in 1996 by Mountain Press, Missoula, Montana.