Vaquero: Genesis of the Texas Cowboy

 Refugio "Cuco" Salas, Remudero by Bill Wittliff, 1971 

¡Viva Mexico!

Monumentos a la Revolucion / Monuments to the Revolution by Rodrigo Moya, 1958 

Monumento ecuestre a Juarez / Equestrian Monument to Benito Juarez by Pablo Ortiz Monasterio           

March 27 – July 31, 2010

VAQUERO: Genesis of the Texas Cowboy
Photographs by Bill Wittliff

When Texas moved into the cattle business, its cowboy adopted many of the Mexican vaquero’s accoutrements and centuries-old methodologies of working herds in big country. Drafted by historian Joe Frantz in the early 1970s to witness one of the last traditional roundups on the vast Rancho Tule in northern Mexico, Bill Wittliff fixed the vanishing vaquero tradition forever in nearly 5,000 photo­graphs taken over a period of three years. In 2004, the University of Texas Press published the best of Wittliff’s sepia-toned darkroom prints in the monograph, Vaquero: Genesis of the Texas Cowboy.
Now Humanities Texas, the state affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities, is touring more than 60 Vaquero images the Wittliff Collections
commissioned to be recreated as rich carbon-ink prints. Accompanied by bilingual narrative texts from the book, this special exhibition—which makes a stop at the Wittliff—is made possible in part by a “We The People” grant from the NEH.

March 27 – July 31, 2010
¡VIVA MÉXICO!
To honor the bicentennial of Mexico’s independence from Spain and the cen­tennial of the 1910 Mexican Revolution, the Wittliff Collections celebrate the country in images. More than 100 historical and modern, documentary and art photographs witness the strength of subject and the vitality of vision that define the Wittliff’s Southwestern & Mexican Photography Collection. This exhibition is also part of the Texas and Mexico, 1810–2010 Commemoration at Texas State.

Lola Álvarez Bravo | Manuel Álvarez Bravo | Yolanda Andrade | François Aubert | Lázaro Blanco | Hugo Brehme | Debbie Fleming Caffery | Casasola archives | Keith Carter | Manuel Carrillo | Henri Cartier-Bresson | John Christian | Marco Antonio Cruz | Dennis Darling | Faustinus Deraet | Héctor García | Flor Garduño | Maya Goded | Graciela Iturbide | Guillermo Kahlo | Robb Kendrick | Nacho López | Francisco Mata Rosas | Eniac Martínez Ulloa | Luis Márquez | Tina Modotti–Edward Weston | Pablo Ortiz Monasterio | Rodrigo Moya | José Ángel Rodríguez | Sebastião Salgado | Paul Strand | Edward Larocque Tinker | Ángeles Torrejón | Antonio Turok | Bob Wade | C.B. Waite | Geoff Winningham | Bill Wittliff | Mariana Yampolsky

INSTRUCTING  |  ILLUMINATING  |  INSPIRING  

THE WITTLIFF COLLECTIONS offer a dynamic archival, exhibition, programming, and research environment designed to further the cultural legacy of the region’s literary and photographic arts, and foster “the spirit of place” in the wider world. THE SOUTHWESTERN WRITERS COLLECTION preserves and exhibits the literary papers and artifacts of principal writers, filmmakers, and musicians, including the major archives of Cormac McCarthy, Sam Shepard, and John Graves, as well as the production archives of Texas Monthly magazine, Fox’s animated series King of the Hill, and the CBS miniseries Lonesome Dove. THE SOUTHWESTERN & MEXICAN PHOTOGRAPHY COLLECTION includes the major holdings of such renowned artists as Kate Breakey, Keith Carter, and Graciela Iturbide, and houses the largest archive of modern and contemporary Mexican photography in the United States. Connie Todd, Curator.