Curt C.
Yelp
This museum is like four museums in one!
Whoa!
First there's the Buffalo Bill Museum. Here, you get to learn about the history of the man himself. The guy whose legend was bigger than the man himself. Buffalo Bill Cody lived the life. He met the Queen of England when he put on an old west show! His show would travel the land, setting up to stun the people. He even had a huge show in NYC where he dazzled those Yankees with his horse skills and shooting demonstrations.
Then there's the Native American art museum, with a great wide selection of Native American arts, from across the plains and the southwest. They had the art shown differently than other Tribal museums I've been to. This one would show something like dance gear, and show all the tribes' art together, instead of other broad based Indian museums sorting the museum by tribe. It was sorted by the item, not the origin, I guess you could say. This was the best museum if you ask me. They've gone to great lengths to show great examples of the pieces, and the plight of the Indians after the ration coupons were issued to the tribe once the Government cut off their resources and made them reliant on Uncle Sam. It showed stuff from the Trail of Tears, and highlighted how the US Government interacted with the tribes, and how it impacted their artwork. I was amazed by the depth of the art, how well the pieces were described into detail about the story behind the artwork.
Ok, the next section was the area's natural history. It had lots of taxidermied animals from the area, arranged as you'd see them in the wild. It showed info on how they live, breed, where they go in the winter. It was fantastically done, all on an incline that walks you down to the basement where the exhibit opens up.
Then there's the gun museum. They claim that this is one of the biggest gun displays out there. I'm from Texas, where we take pride in our guns. This is a lot of guns. They have guns sorted by war- military weapons from WWII, the Korean War- many in these pull out drawers, where you can get a closer look at the guns. They have so many guns they had to get innovative about how to store them since they ran out of room to display them! They have the crazy guns that make you wonder- one that shoots in 4 directions at once, a 3D printed gun, ones that fit in the palm of a lady's hand. There's a shooting gallery, but it shoots lasers. You can learn about rifling in the barrels, and different trigger styles. Cool! Pew Pew!
Then there's Contemporary Art- this was a great display of different media focusing on the American West- art that depicts things in the area. There were paintings from modern day cowboys and drawings from modern day Indians. It was really quite moving to see the paintings from Yellowstone's Artist Point, when we had just visited there.
The gift shop was huge. There's a wide selection of books and knicknacks, since there's so many museums, there's a big gift shop. The museum did a great job of highlighting the names of the artists and titles of the art we were looking at. The staff hung out and kept to themselves. The museum was clean and brightly lit. Parking was easy. Great museum.
