Celebrate International Women’s Day with the National Cowgirl Museum and Hall of Fame and Photographer Barbara Van Cleve.
Today is International Women’s Day. On this global holiday meant to recognize women’s achievements and to encourage gender parity, we think it’s fitting to consider the cowgirl.
Lucky for C&I, the National Cowgirl Museum and Hall of Fame is right in our Fort Worth, Texas, backyard, and they’ve got a wonderful exhibition on view by one of the most accomplished of cowgirls, photographer Barbara Van Cleve.
A 1995 Hall of Fame honoree, Van Cleve photographs ranch life in the modern West. Raised on her family’s Montana ranch, she learned ranching by living it and practiced photography as an avocation. Before retiring to pursue photography full time, she taught it and English literature at DePaul University in Chicago, where she became the youngest dean of women in the country.
Van Cleve has gained international acclaim for her photographic work, especially her 1995 book, Hard Twist: Western Ranch Women; an exhibition of images from the book traveled extensively, including a stint at the National Cowgirl Museum and Hall of Fame.
Currently, the museum is featuring Pure Quill: Photographs by Barbara Van Cleve, the first exhibition to showcase the breadth of Van Cleve’s subject matter, including her Rodeo as Dance series, her portraits using the moon and stars as a light source, and her decades-long documentation of the Spanish Mission Trail in Baja, California.
Pure Quill: Photographs by Barbara Van Cleve is on view through May 5, 2017, at the National Cowgirl Museum and Hall of Fame in Fort Worth.
