Speakers Bureau Speaker
Betsy Fahlman, Tempe
Betsy Fahlman received her M.A. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Delaware. She is a Professor of Art History at Arizona State University, where she has taught since 1988. A specialist in American art of the 19th and 20th centuries, she is writing a book on New Deal photography and culture in Arizona. Dr. Fahlman is the author of The Cowboy's Dream: The Mythic Life and Art of Lon Megargee (2002).
Presentations are suitable for high school as well as adult audiences.
Adventurous Spirits: Arizona’s Women Artists, 1900-1950
The early art community of Arizona was comprised mostly of women, and this talk explores the varied careers of five of these independent and talented artists. One of the first to arrive was Kate Cory, who came to Oraibi in 1905. She remained seven years in Hopiland, producing a remarkable series of paintings and photographs, before moving to Prescott in 1912. Marjorie Thomas arrived in Scottsdale with her brother in 1909, who had moved here for his health. Lillian Wilhelm Smith came to the state in 1913 with her cousin by marriage, Zane Grey, and illustrated a number of his books. Jessie Benton Evans settled in Scottsdale in 1923, and her desert villa became a social center for local artists. She produced a series of beautiful Impressionist desert landscapes. The 1920s brought Mary-Russell Ferrell Colton, who, with her husband Harold, founded the Museum of Northern Arizona in 1928. Explore these and other women artists who settled and visited Arizona.
• Host organization provides slide projector and screen.
A Gallop Through the Art History of Arizona
Arizona has a rich art history, and many of the visiting and resident artists who recorded the landscape and native peoples helped create a national image of the state. This presentation will explore Arizona’s identity against the backdrop of the larger history of the art of the American West, and illustrate what "The West" was for those who had never visited. Material relating to tourism, movies, pulp magazines, mining, industry, and the iconography of the state seal will also be discussed.
• Host organization provides slide projector and screen.
Lon Megargee: Arizona’s Cowboy Artist
Lon Megargee (1883-1960) came to Arizona in 1896, and after a decade as a cowboy, decided to give up ranching for painting. At statehood, he executed fifteen murals for the State Capitol, and for nearly half a century he was intertwined with significant events and institutions connected with the state’s history. One of his best-known paintings remains "The Cowboy’s Dream," one of a series that was used to advertise the best brand produced by the Arizona Brewing Company, A-1 Beer. Another image by Megargee, "The Last Drop from his Stetson," is still used by the Stetson Hat Company. As did many of his fellow artists, he received patronage from the Santa Fe Railway Company, and his most characteristic themes were the desert landscape, Native Americans, and the cowboy. His life is viewed as a classic Arizona story, and in his art he portrayed many of the central myths of the West that absorbed his more famous contemporaries, including Frederic Remington and Charles Russell.
• Host organization provides slide projector and screen.
