Page 80 - 2015 Russell Catalogue

2015 Heritage Award2015 Heritage Award Recipient Art HistoryPeter HassrickThe C.M. Russell Museum is pleased to honor Peter Hassrick with the 2015 C.M. Russell Museum Heritage Award in art history, which recognizes significant contributions in interpreting and documenting the legacy, culture, life, and country of Charles M. Russell’s West.Hassrick has devoted his professional life to documenting and interpreting Western art. Through his wide-ranging activities over the course of decades, he has perpetuated and elaborated upon the legacy of artists like Charles Marion Russell.Since entering the field, Hassrick has constantly researched, spoken about, written and published on, and curated exhibitions about Western art. While his production of publications and exhibitions about Western art and artists is truly formidable, the C.M. Russell Museum is, of course, particularly appreciative of his exhibition Remington, Russell and the Language of Western Art (2000–2001), his book Charles M. Russell (New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 1989), and his essays “Charles Russell, Painter,” in Charles M.Russell: A Catalogue Raisonné (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2007) and “Goodwin & Russell,” in Charlie Russell & Friends, an issue of Western Passages (Denver Art Museum, 2010).Most arresting of all is that often, while Hassrick was completing all this work, he was also directing a museum or scholarly institute. In his various capacities at the Amon Carter Museum, the Buffalo Bill Historical Center, the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum, the Charles M. Russell Center at the University of Oklahoma, the Petrie Institute at the Denver Art Museum, and now as director emeritus and senior scholar at the Buffalo Bill Center for the West, he has continued to pursue his own research interests while mentoring countless bright young scholars who appreciated and shared his zeal for Western art.Hassrick’s continuous investment in research and writing and exhibiting in this field has made his life a remarkable parallel to what the C.M. Russell Museum seeks to achieve. One could not ask for a better example, written in the language of life and work, than the legacy that Hassrick has and continues to create for himself and the field of Western art.Hassrick’s name will be added to the distinguished list of recipients of the C.M. Russell Heritage Award in art history, which includes Ginger Renner (2010), Rick Stewart (2012), and Brian Dippie (2014).