Theodore Wores in the Southwest
October 20, 2006-January 27, 2007

Best known for his paintings of Meiji-era Japan, San Francisco-born artist Theodore Wores (1858-1939) painted colorful scenes of the American Southwest between 1915 and 1917.  His inspiration came from the Santa Fe Railway’s “Grand Canyon of Arizona” exhibit at the Panama-Pacific International Exposition (PPIE) in San Francisco (1915), a trip to the real Grand Canyon (1916), and several weeks spent in intensive work at Taos, New Mexico (1917), socializing with the artists and painting the Native Americans at Taos Pueblo.  Through Wores’ own written accounts and recently discovered photographs, and new oral historical research, this exhibition and accompanying catalog explores the artist’s Southwest Indian paintings from the collection of the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County.  Original research for this exhibition demonstrated that dozens of the artist’s paintings previously attributed to painting trips to the pueblos of the Southwest were actually painted in California at the PPIE.  Further research uncovered the identities of several of the Native American models.

This exhibition was made possible by generous contributions from: Dr. A. Jess Shenson, The Shenson Foundation, and San Francisco Grants for the Arts. Lenders to the exhibition include Fred M. Levin and Nancy Livingston, The Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, Iris & B. Gerald Cantor Center for Visual Arts at Stanford University, St. Francis Memorial Hospital, and The Bancroft Library.

Pamela Young Lee
Guest Curator

The exhibition catalogue, Theodore Wores in the Southwest, edited by Stephen Becker and distributed by Heyday Books is available in our bookstore. To order please call 415-357-1848 x230.