Im crosby camper. We are grateful to have you here on Valentines Day at the Kansas City public library. When i was a boy my father took me on his ankle trips to the West And Southwest and as we called on the banks, kettle customers, not infrequently road with the Cattle Rain ranchers on the range. I was introduced to the choice of the Prairie Oyster. For those of you who dont know with a Prairie Oyster is we will see later. I remember calling on a bank in a spin with my father when i was eight or nine years old and that is a long long time ago, from 67 and the streets were not paved. The restaurant next door to the hotel was swimming in dust left over from the Gold Rush days. Gold dust, not gold dust. Obviously. The three largest banks and one point the largest Bank West of the mississippi and 1900 in the first national bank, the oldest thank, financed the growth of the west in the mid southwest, the cattle ranchers, hardware suppliers, dry goods importante, the railroads, the downstre
of the ranching history is texas, texas, texas, but one of the things we talked about this show, we pitched it as looking without rather than always looking within. we are in the panhandle plains historical museum. the museum is the largest historical museum in the state of texas, if you count it by the number of artifacts and the exhibition title is cattle, cowboys and culture. kansas city and amarillo building an urban west. michael grauer, both of us are native to kansas city. we were always interested in why this place felt so familiar to us as having grown up there. michael started looking at the objects and there were over 1,000 objects on a daily basis he started pulling up. we found such a good array, variety of objects that we thought we needed to do a show that told the sister city hood of kansas city and amarillo. this closeness is basically around the train system and the cattle industry that drew those two cities together. we tell the story of that in this show.
few months working with him. some of you may already have been through our new exhibit opening just under two weeks ago on the second floor in the mountain gallery, cattle cowboys and culture. if you have not, i would strongly urge you to. it is just a fascinating collection. i m talking about a large collection of artifacts. art and other objects that illuminate the connection that i was not aware of down through history going back through the cattle days between city of kansas city and amaral, texas. it is so big, part of its buildout into the first floor. you may have seen the big saddle their. it is a terrific exhibit. this pointremiss at before getting to michael. introduce her in the back back there. she is our library arts exhibit direct her perch she has worked with michael. she is responsible for all both great exhibit to see all the great exhibits you see in our gallery. she does a terrific job. michael is really responsible exhibit being here and bringing it to u
mountain gallery, cattle, cowboys and culture. if you haven t, i would strongly urge you to. it is a fascinating collection. i am talking about a large collection of artifacts, art and other objects that illuminate the connection that i was not aware of, down through history through the cattle days, between the city of kansas city and amarillo, texas. it is so big, in fact, part of it has spilled into kirk call on the first floor. you may have seen the big saddle. it is a terrific exhibit. and i would be remiss at this point, before getting to michael, if i did not introduce ann duecy, standing in the back there. she is our library art exhibit director. she has worked with michael. she is responsible for all of these great exhibits that you see in both of our galleries. she does a terrific job. and michael is really responsible for the most part, for this exhibit being here and bringing it to us. he is the associate director of curatorial affairs and the curator of art an
refers to the many different ways that life on this part of the country has been recorded, either through letters or diaries or journals or photographs or objects as well, by the many, many different varieties of ethnic cultures that have lived here. what we wanted to accomplish in emphasizing the materials that you see in this exhibit is that more information can be gathered by just using the records that we have on the second floor, our research core, the archives themselves, and then also a research library of 40,000 volumes on the american west. human habitation in the plains would date from certainly in this part of the country, from well before the current era. most an throw pothropologists n american indians as far back as 10,000 to 12,000 years ago, plains culture. what you will see in this exhibit here is much more recent, perhaps about 1700, but it is still precontact. we date the contact period from about in this part of the country anyway, from about the 1740s w