"Not your grandfather's Remington": Reimagining the Cowboy Today

Join us for an insightful conversation as MCA Denver's Nora Burnett Abrams and Miranda Lash discuss the development of "Cowboy," an ambitious traveling exhibition that unpacks the myths and realities associated with the American cowboy both historically and in today's popular culture. Together with artist Jaye Rhee, whose work "Arizona Cowboy" (as part of "Far West, So Close"), appears in the exhibition, they will explore why the cowboy has remained one of our country's most enduring icons, and how the artworks in this exhibition offer new narratives and perspectives to the broader public.

"Cowboy" reexamines the popular mythologies surrounding the image and concept of the cowboy. Through the work of more than 25 artists representing Asian American, Latino, and Indigenous perspectives, the exhibition explores a wide array of themes, including the cowboy’s role in shaping our perception of masculinity and gender, as well as long-held assumptions about cowboys’ relationship to land. The work also investigates the way these assumptions come into conflict with the lived experiences of contemporary cowboys. "Cowboy," organized by the Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA) Denver, brings together approximately 70 cutting-edge contemporary artworks including new commissions.

With work that simultaneously incorporates video, performance, photography, and objects, Jaye Rhee explores the legacy of inconsistent modernities associated with global industrialization and the export of “Western” values that supplant or fuse with other cultural traditions. Much of her work explores the evasive nature of authentic desire, the incongruence between dreams and reality, and how images of utopia play into larger cultural narratives that flow across international lines. She seeks to evaporate the fantasy of a total, uncomplicated view of historical identity. Through simulation, re-creation, and other ways of faking it, her work produces artificial effects that trouble real notions of power, truth, and influence. 

Born in Seoul, South Korea, Rhee graduated from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (BFA, MFA) and is based in New York. Her work has been exhibited at international venues including Norton Museum of Art, High Museum of Art, MCA Denver, Queens Museum, Buffalo AKG Art Museum, The Bronx Museum of the Arts, Mori Art Museum (Tokyo), Seoul Mediacity Biennale (2023), Daejeon Art and Science Biennale (2022), Seoul Museum of Art, Songeun (Seoul), Gyeonggi Museum of Art (South Korea), Leeum Samsung Museum (Seoul), the Centro para os Assuntos da Arte e Arquitectura (Portugal) and La Triennale di Milano (Milan). 

Miranda Lash is the Ellen Bruss Senior Curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art Denver. Lash has organized a wide range of museum exhibitions including Clarissa Tossin: Falling from Earth; Eamon Ore-Giron: Competing with Lighting/ Rivalizando con el relampágo; Jason Moran: Bathing the Room with Blues; the traveling retrospective Mel Chin: Rematch; Camille Henrot: Cities of Ys; Rashaad Newsome: King of Arms; Swoon: Thalassa; and Quintron and Miss Pussycat: Parallel Universe, Live at City Park. In 2016 Lash and Trevor Schoonmaker co-organized the acclaimed exhibition Southern Accent: Seeking the American South in Contemporary Art. In addition to holding curatorial positions at the Speed Art Museum and The Menil Collection, Lash was the founding Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at the New Orleans Museum of Art from 2008 to 2014. Her most recent projects include Tomashi Jackson: Across the Universe, a traveling survey and monograph of Jackson's work; and Cowboy, a large-scale traveling exhibition on the myths and realities associated with the American cowboy, co-curated with Nora Burnett Abrams, the Mark G. Falcone Director of MCA Denver. Lash currently serves on the board of the Joan Mitchell Foundation and was a 2022 Fellow with the Center for Curatorial Leadership. She has been a Clark Fellow at the Clark Art Institute, a panelist for the National Endowment for the Arts, and a member of the artistic director’s Curatorial Council for Prospect.4. She holds a BA with honors from Harvard University in the History of Art and Architecture and an MA from Williams College from the Graduate Program in the History of Art.

Nora Burnett Abrams is the Mark G. Falcone Director of the Museum of Contemporary Art Denver. Among the youngest museum directors in the country, Abrams moved into the Director role after nearly a decade as the Ellen Bruss Curator and Director of Planning. Since arriving in Denver in 2010, she has organized over 40 exhibitions and authored or contributed to over a dozen accompanying publications. Recent projects highlighted unusual or unknown episodes in artists’ careers such as Basquiat Before Basquiat (2017), which traveled to 3 other venues, as well as the first survey of Senga Nengudi’s R.S.V.P. sculptures (2014), which traveled to 5 other venues around the country. Her most recent projects included a retrospective of artist Tara Donovan (2018), which traveled to the Smart Museum at the University of Chicago, and a focused presentation of never-before-seen photographs and ephemera by Francesca Woodman (2019). With Miranda Lash, she co-curated the widely recognized Cowboy exhibition (2023), which will travel to the Amon Carter Museum of American Art. She has taught art history at New York University and lectured throughout the country on modern and contemporary art. She holds art history degrees from Stanford University (B.A.), Columbia University (M.A.), and a Ph.D. from the Institute of Fine Arts at New York University.