To twenty-first-century observers, artistic training may seem an unnecessary frill in a soldier's education. But during the nineteenth and even the twentieth centuries, military officers were expected to sketch battlefields and design fortifications. Officers of the Army Corps of Topographical Engineers, which organized exploring expeditions, were asked to return with the information needed to map the expanding American West. Thus, the Military Academy at West Point incorporated art into its curriculum within a year after its creation in 1802.

"West Point Points West" celebrates the...

William and Dorothy Harmsen were true American entrepreneurs whose ice-cream store, founded in 1949, grew into the wildly successful Jolly Rancher Candy Company. This volume highlights the Harmsens' legacy as Colorado businesspeople and philanthropists.

Bill and Dorothy lived their passion for the West, among other ways, through art. Beginning in 1967, they built a collection that broadly encompassed the American West. They bought works by recognized masters of American western art such as George Catlin and Ernest L. Blumenschein, but they also acquired works by artists exploring...

Because western art is by definition topical, it is also by necessity representational, and often narrative. Western artists must therefore rely on a certain degree of realism to express themselves visually. While this tendency toward realism is out of keeping with abstract impressionism, which dominated the art world in the latter half of the twentieth century, it resonates positively with today's audiences.

Since the early 1990s, the Denver Art Museum has collected and exhibited the works of living American artists who celebrate western themes through representational forms of creative...