Exhibit Opening Reception

Women Artists of the American West: Colorado and Utah, 1885-1935

From January 20 to June 30, 2026, AWARE (Archives of Women Artists, Research and Exhibitions) and History Jackson Hole present the second part of the exhibition Women Artists of the American West.

After a first installation dedicated to Trailblazers at the Turn of the 20th Century in Montana and Wyoming (January 29 to July 12, 2025), the upcoming exhibition will focus on Women Artists of the American West: Colorado and Utah, 1885–1935.

This new chapter, on view at the Jackson Hole History Museum, continues the mission of AWARE’s work: to demonstrate that there are and have been women working – often achieving national or international success – as artists in every region, in every time.

Opening Reception on Thursday, February 5, 6 – 7:30p

AWARE curator Camille Morineau and History Museum staff will be on hand to answer questions. The reception is free and open to the public. 

These shows and the accompanying print catalog illustrate a wider phenomenon: the key role that women have played in furthering art and culture, even in places and time periods where we might think they were the least active.

In Wyoming and Montana these women often worked in isolation, guided by initiative and grit, and sustained by the friendships found in ranching communities. Others, based in more populous states like Colorado, and built collaborative networks like the Denver Artists’ Club, which later grew into the Denver Art Museum. 

Across their stories, we see a determination to create, connect, and boost women’s voices in the American West. By sharing these trailblazing artists’ stories, today’s women of the West can derive inspiration and the fortitude to live their own lives – in whatever forms their self-expression may take.

The new exhibition spans from the Progressive Era at the turn of the 20th century to the mid-1930s, when Roosevelt’s New Deal programs offered new opportunities for women artists and intellectuals. During this period, Denver and Salt Lake City emerged as key cultural centers. In Denver for example, artist Helen Henderson Chain founded the city’s first art school in 1877, followed by other art associations like the all-female LeBrun Art Club and the Denver Art Museum. In Salt Lake City, though the art world was largely male-dominated, several women succeeded in making their mark, using art both as a means of public expression and as a bridge to philanthropic work. 

The careers of the seven artists featured in this second show illuminate a lesser-known chapter of Western Art and showcase their work together in the region where they worked. Their paintings and photographs add depth and complexity to the stories we tell about the Rocky Mountains, the Western landscape, and women’s place therein. Their works and careers reveal that the American West was never the simple, masculine rugged frontier that lives large in the American conception, but something layered, nuanced, and multi-gendered.

A comprehensive catalog, Women Artists of the American West: Fifty Years in the Rockies 1885-1935, including scholarly essays, in-depth biographies of each artist, and images of all the works, accompanies the exhibition and is available for purchase in the Jackson Hole History Museum Store. 

Artists from Colorado are: Helen Henderson Chain, Elisabeth Spalding, Anne Gregory Van Briggle, Laura Gilpin. Artists from Utah are: Louise Richards Farnsworth, Mabel Pearl Frazer, Florence Ellen Ware.

Original artworks are on loan and reproduced from the Amon Carter Museum of American Art, Brigham Young University Museum of Art, The Collection of the Kirkland at the Denver Art Museum, History Colorado, and Utah Museum of Fine Art.