The Museum of Western Art is pleased to host “Vaquero: Genesis of the Texas Cowboy” that opens June 9 and will remain on view through July 14, 2017.

In the early 1970s, noted Texas historian Joe Frantz offered Bill Wittliff a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity – to visit a ranch in northern Mexico where the vaqueros still worked cattle in traditional ways. Wittliff photographed the vaqueros as they went about daily chores that had changed little since the first Mexican cowherders learned to work cattle from a horse’s back. Wittliff captured a way of life that now exists only in memory and in the photographs included in this exhibition.

“Vaquero: Genesis of the Texas Cowboy” features photographs with bilingual narrative text that reveal the muscle, sweat and drama that went into roping a calf in thick brush or breaking a wild horse in the saddle. The exhibition is created by the Wittliff Collections at the Alkek Library, Texas State University, presented in partnership with Humanities Texas, the state affiliate for the National Endowment for the Humanities. It is made possible in part by a “We the People” grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

For more information, please contact the museum at 830.896.2553.