The Virginia Museum of Fine Arts has recently added a diverse group of artworks to its permanent collection.
Among the new works now housed at the Richmond-based institution is a 1979 painting by Fritz Scholder (La Jolla Band of Luiseño Indians) titled Indian Cowboy and Horse, an important addition to the museum’s Indigenous American art holdings. The acrylic on canvas features a cowboy standing next to a bright blue horse against a saturated pink backdrop, rendered in the artist’s signature style.
Fritz Scholder (La Jolla Band of Luiseño Indians, 1937-2005), Indian Cowboy and Horse, 1979, acrylic on canvas. Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Mrs. Alfred I duPont Fund, by exchange, 2024.315. Photograph by Troy Wilkinson © Virginia Museum of Fine Arts.
“While Scholder’s Indigenous cowboy bears such archetypal markings—Western wear, a horse companion, a sense of stoicism and a holstered gun—he is rendered in bubblegum pink and vibrant blue to sardonically undercut assumptive boundaries between American cowboys and Indigenous people as they are seen in popular culture,” says Siera Hyte (Cherokee Nation), VMFA’s Schiller Family Curator of Indigenous American Art. The museum intends to feature Scholder’s painting as a cornerstone of the expanded galleries for Indigenous American art in the new wing.
The VMFA’s current expansion and renovation project is the largest in the museum’s history. The addition of the McGlothlin Wing II will expand the museum by approximately 173,000 square feet, including 30,000 square feet dedicated to American and Indigenous American art. —
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