An exhibit at the Museum of Northern Arizona in Flagstaff explores the art used to promote travel to the Southwest in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Much of it was related to the Santa Fe Railway and Fred Harvey Company, and showed a part of the country that many Americans had never seen before.
Alan Petersen says the exhibit came about as he was looking to rebuild the museum’s exhibit schedule after COVID-19, and wanted to draw from its fine art collection. He wondered how many of the artists in the museum’s collection produced work for the Santa Fe Railway in the early 20th century – the answer, it turns out, is far more than he expected.
Petersen is curator of fine arts at the Museum of Northern Arizona and the curator of the Selling the Southwest exhibit, which will be on display there through January of next year. He joins The Show to talk more about it.
Full conversation
MARK BRODIE: Is this a time in American history and artwork that really relates to this part of the country and northern Arizona specifically?
ALAN PETERSEN: It is. And that's, and I've, I've always loved this like I said, this era, but also just that, that whole milieu that was, that was taking place here in the Southwest. You know, from, from New Mexico to Southern California and it was, it was a very rich period and, and really interest in the Southwest had begun to grow in a pretty significant way before the Santa Fe, you know, had decided to start using artwork to promote their, their route out here.
BRODIE: How did the Santa Fe railroad try to market the Southwest? Like, what kinds of images did they use? What kinds of maybe thoughts were they trying to evoke to convince people to come out here?
PETERSEN: So the predecessors, let me just mention them briefly. So predecessors, people who had written about or done artwork about the Southwest date back to the artist who had worked with John Wesley Powell in his survey of the Grand Canyon.
And then towards the end of the 19th century, a writer named Charles Loomis published a couple of books and so those books and you know, writings and poetry by Mary Austin and other, you know, writers. You know, Frederick Remington was really big at that time in American art. And I think that the Santa Fe recognized the power of the visual image.
So one of the marketing directors had the idea to invite Thomas Moran, the landscape painter who was again really big in American art at that time, invited Moran to the Grand Canyon and the painting, the brand that Moran did on that visit was used in some promotional materials. The Santa Fe didn't acquire that painting.
But beginning in 1903, they did begin to build a collection and in doing so, built a large collection of over 500 works, but also built on the mystery and the mystique and the, the ancient cultures that lived here in the Southwest.
BRODIE: I'm interested in, in that era of mystery that you talked about because obviously at that, at that time, like this was not a place that some majority of Americans had been to. So it almost seems like it was the kind of thing where the, the railway could kind of create the image that it wanted to almost define, define the area before anybody else had the chance to at least people who are coming here from somewhere else. Of course, not people who are already living here or, or Native Americans.
PETERSEN: Yes, absolutely. Like I said, I think they saw the opportunity. They, they knew they had a great product and, you know, along with the Fred Harvey company, who then established restaurants and hotels along the route. They could provide, you know, the, the complete package.
And as I said earlier, they had, you know, fantastic landscapes that they could use and, and you know, that artists would portray in landscapes, but then depictions of Native Americans and, and all that, all that visual imagery was very idealized and people came to accept it, you know, their customers, the public in general came to accept that image of the Southwest. And really, it, it, it persists to this day.
BRODIE: Yeah. I mean, do you draw a direct line from some of this artwork to the way that, that people have seen the Southwest throughout history?
PETERSEN: Absolutely. Absolutely. You know, if you go into any of the galleries and, well, certainly Santa Fe, New Mexico, Albuquerque, any of the galleries here in Flagstaff, you know, you see work that in some cases looks like it could have been done during that period of time, 100 years ago.
But then there are modern representations that are, you know, addressing the same subjects, but with a more, you know, contemporary approach to the subjects, right?
BRODIE: Right. What was the contribution of native artists? I mean, were they included in, in some of this marketing? And if so was it by choice or were they compelled to do it?
PETERSEN: Well, you know, surprisingly, yes, they were included. Native people benefited. Well, it was a mixed blessing. I, I, I have to preface what I, what I say. They, you know, as in many cases around the country, in the world, the Indigenous people enjoyed a mixed blessing from this interaction and the transactions that they were able to you know, achieve.
So when the railroad first arrived in the Southwest, in the 1880s, Native people were able to sell art directly to travelers from the station platforms. So that was a great direct, you know, way of sales that they could, you know, that they could do, make and really remarkably. And, and I, and I learned this in the course of work on this, on this exhibition. As a number of Native artists did sell work to the railroad that became part of their collection.
The funny thing is though I haven't dug deeply enough to see how that work was used. If in fact, maybe it was ever used in promotional materials.
BRODIE: It seems like it might have been kind of a double edged sword for at least some Native Americans in the sense that they were able to sell their artwork. But that artwork, as you say, to the extent that it was used in the marketing efforts, was potentially used to bring people out here who weren't necessarily all that kind or respectful to those people, to those Native Americans.
PETERSEN: No. And in fact, there are, there are some pretty funny, sad stories of, you know, things that, that, that illustrate that.
BRODIE: Well, so when you look at this exhibition as a whole, do you still see elements of how people think about the Southwest in the way that it was being marketed in the earlier part of the 20th century?
PETERSEN: Oh, yes. I think that, I think if you were to look at the, the work in the exhibition, you, you'd recognize some specific landmarks. I mean, certainly the Grand Canyon, the San Francisco peaks here in Flagstaff. But there are also, you know, a number of, kind of generic, you know, unidentified locations in the southwest here in Northern Arizona that might not be identifiable as a specific location.
But most people certainly in the United States would, would immediately recognize as being in the Southwest. And I think that's actually one of the things, too. I mean, you know, I use the word mystery and mystique and yes, the, the audience for this was people primarily in the East Coast, you know. So what did they know about the West at that time?
They knew Frederick Remington, they knew a couple of other artists, they knew dime store, you know, cowboy novels, cowboys and Indians, that kind of thing. And of course, movies were coming out then too, but the landscapes are almost otherworldly.
And I think that the power of the, the expanse of the landscape here coupled with, for, you know, landscape formations and a geography that was completely foreign to anybody, you know, certainly east of the Mississippi. And I think that that would have been viewed as not only mysterious but also potentially threatening might be too big of a word, but, you know, certainly not a comfortable landscape.
And, you know, I think that people are to some degree enticed by things that might offer a little bit of danger as long as there's safety to be had while experiencing that.
