University of Montana to Present Spectacular Western Art Exhibit

The University of Montana recently was gifted a significant art collection. And what a collection it is, too.

Lovers of western art will not want to miss this. UM News Service tells us that UM’s Montana Museum of Art and Culture acquired the collection from Stan and Donna Goodbar of Cheyenne, Wyoming. The donation of more than 125 works deepens the museum’s holdings in Western art during the last century.

According to Rafael Chacón, MMAC director and a professor of art history and criticism, "This exhibition features artists who made a living primarily as illustrators, both shaping and reinforcing myths about the West’s settlers, cowboys and Indigenous inhabitants."  The works will be displayed in an exhibit called “Imagining the West: Selections from the Stan and Donna Goodbar Collection of Western Art.”

The exhibition will run from February 4 to March 26 in the Meloy Gallery of UM’s Performing Arts and Radio/Television Center. The new collection highlights artists who followed Charles M. Russell and Frederick Remington’s footsteps in the traditions of Western art and includes Montana artists such as John Clarke, Jo De Yong, Elizabeth Lochrie, Ace Powell and O.C. Seltzer.

Stan Goodbar was born in Great Falls in 1929 and raised in Chester, Montana. He briefly attended college in Great Falls before serving in the U.S. Navy for four years. Returning from Korea in 1952, Goodbar married Donna Jeppesen, who attended UM and received her teaching certification from Eastern Montana College in Billings. Their marriage lasted close to 70 years, until Donna passed away early in 2021.

If you'd like to know about exhibit hours, special additional events in conjunction with the exhibit and more you can contact H. Rafael Chacón, director, UM Montana Museum of Art and Culture, 406-243-2019, or email hrafael.chacon@umontana.edu.