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(bright music) - [Craig] The Harry Jackson Institute has spent the last three years professionally documenting and storing 5,000 plus objects of the world famous artist's amazing collection, and it's now all in a warehouse in Cody.

The question is, what's next?

(bright music) The artist and his Wyoming legacy, next on "Wyoming Chronicle".

(light cinematic music) - [Voice Over 2] Funding for this program is made possible in part by The Wyoming Humanities Council, helping Wyoming take a closer look at life through the humanities, thinkwy.org, and by the members of the WyomingPBS Foundation.

Thank you for your support.

- And as we begin this "Wyoming Chronicle" at The Harry Jackson Studio in Cody, I'm pleased to be joined by Mark Harrison and Gerald Shippen.

Mark here with The Harry Jackson Institute, you're president and CEO, welcome to "Wyoming Chronicle".

- Thank you, Craig.

- And Gerald, you're with Buffalo Jump Studios.

You have a relationship with The Harry Jackson Institute.

Welcome.

- Yes.

Thanks very much.

Glad to be here.

- We have a lot to learn about this artist, Harry Jackson, who spent a lot of time in Cody.

And as we begin our discussion about Harry, let's give our artists, our viewers, a little bit of background about the artist, if we could.

He came to Cody when he was a very young person.

Give us a little bit about his history, and then we wanna work more to learn about what's here at the studio, and the work of The Harry Jackson Institute.

When did he come to Cody?

- Far as I remember, he was about 14 when he came.

And he saw some kind of a story in the Life Magazine about the Pitchfork Ranch.

That's the story I recall.

- [Mark] Yes.

- So Harry was quite young.

(laughs) - Decided he wanted to come West and be a cowboy.

- We're in The Harry Jackson Studio and there are 5,000 artifacts.

And as we'll get to later in the show, we'll show our viewers some of his work, because there are so much here that he has and that the Institute now has ownership of.

But we wanna understand a little bit about how great of an artist he was and how versatile he was.

He was a Western artist, he was an impressionist, he was a sketch artist for the military as a young Marine.

How great of an artist, Gerald, was Harry Jackson?

- Well, greatness is hard to measure.

He was a great individual, and he had a raw talent.

That's what he would have called it, a raw talent.

When he was a child, he studied art, I recall his mom even sending him to some art lessons when he was very young.

But to measure how great he was is difficult to say.

His work is very good.

He was a wonderful portraitist, he was a wonderful painter, he understood abstract, expressionism, and all of those genres of his time and the time before him.

And so, Harry was an interesting person all in all.

- When you were a young 20 year old, you studied with Harry in Italy.

- Right.

That's right.

I was a student at Central Wyoming College and through various ways came to know Harry Jackson.

He was there at the college placing the "Sacagawea" statue that's there today.

And so one thing led to another, and about three months I was in Italy working at Harry's place.

It was a great change for a Wyoming kid, (laughs) but a wonderful experience, really.

- From what I remembered about Harry Jackson, I thought of him as a Western artist.

I don't know that that's right.

- He was a great Western artist.

Every bit as notable as Remington, but he was much more than that.

Looking at Harry's Western art and saying, "Oh, this is what Harry Jackson is."

is kinda like the old fable about the three blind men describing an elephant.

One grabs the trunk and is convinced he knows everything about what an elephant is, and one grabs the tail, he's convinced he knows everything about what an elephant is.

Harry has such a broad scope of work, his abstract expressionists work, his sculptures has realism.

It boggles the mind to see the whole scope.

And that's one of our main goals at the Institute is to help people see the whole Harry Jackson, not just one portion, but the artist.

He was also a cowboy poet and a musician.

- So Mark, give us some history then about The Harry Jackson Institute.

First, there was the board that helped with the museum, The Harry Jackson Museum, and now there's The Harry Jackson Institute.

- And actually Craig, The Harry Jackson Institute is just our trade name.

We are actually still The Harry Jackson Museum, a 501C3 with the IRS, and The Harry Jackson Museum was originally formed while Harry was still alive.

And our goal was to actually create a brick and mortar museum to house what Harry called, the unique and definitive Harry Jackson collection.

He wanted to have, at least, one piece of every work he did or one copy of every work he did in that collection to show, as we mentioned, the scope and depth of his work, to help people not only learn about Harry Jackson, but to learn more about the different genres of art as well.

After Harry passed we had a somewhat dormant period, and as we reactivated, we picked up the trade name to Harry Jackson Institute, just so there was kind of a separation there to move forward.

And so, that's how we got to the institute.

- So here we are, diligent work is undertaken to catalog and understand this massive collection, and that work is happening as we speak today.

- Yes, it is.

5,000 pieces is probably, if not in the world, probably at least here in Wyoming, the largest single gift of artwork in recorded history.

I don't think there's been a gift that large.

And to go through each and every piece, because as our responsibility is to protect and preserve that collection.

You can't do that if you don't know what you have.

And so our conservators and accessioners have been going through and checking each work to see what the work is, what condition it's in, any possible problems with it, and to record everything and then enter it into a database.

And so we will have a complete database of everything in our collection.

- These works, this space really isn't available to the public as we speak today.

Is it hopeful that one day it will become available?

Is that within the realm of possibility?

- That's absolutely our hope.

Harry's work needs to be on display.

People need to see it.

It's important that it's protected, but it also has to be viewed.

And one of our biggest dreams is to have a place that we can not only showcase the work locally, but to be able to put together exhibitions to send out to other institutions.

For instance, the University of Wyoming has a terrific art museum.

We'd like to have a retrospective there.

We already have a few works out on loan.

We had one of Harry's works, The Art in Embassies Program requested that we send a piece of Harry's work to the embassy in El Salvador.

And so, we had some work there.

We really wanted to get it out, not just here, but internationally.

- People can view some of Harry's work at the Whitney Gallery here at the Center of the West.

- Very true.

Yes.

The Buffalo Bill, I should say, the Buffalo, a BBCOW, (laughs) Buffalo Bill Center of the West.

Whitney Gallery has a large collection of Harry's things and they're out from time to time.

I think, currently there are bronzes on exhibit today, and two large murals, "The Range Burial" and "The Stampede" are part of the Whitney collection over there at the Buffalo Bill Collection.

And so it's a terrific thing to have those over there as well.

- Wonderful "Sacagawea" at Central Wyoming College.

- Yes.

"Sacagawea" there at Central Wyoming College, at the home of the Shoshone, her tribe.

- What do we understand about Harry's wishes, about where this collection should be?

Do we know what his hopes were?

- Yes.

Having said it, in this very room with Harry, Harry wanted this collection to stay first in Wyoming, first and foremost, and he wanted it to be here in Cody.

When Harry was alive, we talked about other locations.

Jackson was mentioned.

Harry really wanted the collections to stay here in Cody, and we are doing our best to try and make that happen.

- Is it possible?

Is there room for what can be a world-class entity in a place where there's another great, great museum in the Center of the West?

- I absolutely think there is, Craig.

They're so different in their collections that I think is a perfect match.

On one end of town, you have a world-class Western art museum that's really focused on that.

And at the other end of town, you could have The Harry Jackson Institute, and we really would like to make that happen.

- Gerald, what do you think about when you come into this space as an artist, with your background and you see such a wide ranging?

- Well, it's been very interesting, Craig, because I first met him I was 20, when I was 20 years old.

And a lot of this work, at the time, was in Italy when I went to Italy to Harry's studio to work.

So when I come back in here today, I'm still rediscovering things, especially in the abstract paintings that you can see behind us.

I'm the same as any other person that walks in with a fresh eyes, perhaps.

You're just sort of taken back by the abstract, expressionism and the realistic bronzes, the realistically painted bronzes.

Harry was a lot of things as an artist.

He's hard to get to pin down, really, and to classify his genre, he was everything.

But I think he considered himself a painter, a colorist, and he would tell you that, I think.

And he utilized the three-dimensional form to design objects to put color on.

And in the beginning, the three-dimensional forms were used for his murals.

They were simply as guides, as forms, models for the large murals, like the Fort Pitt Mural in Pittsburgh and the murals that are here in the studio.

But anyway, it's great to revisit it.

I'm very envious.

I don't have this breadth of work behind me as an artist.

I hope I live long enough to achieve it, but Harry was many things.

He was many things all at once.

- Mark, we're gonna have one of the conservators give us a tour here in just a moment, but before we leave you, his personality was, from what I understand, maybe large, is that a right word?

And the reason I asked that question, does that hinder, maybe, the hope to have the museum that you vision, at least at this moment in time, here in Cody?

- I think you're spot on in saying Harry not only was large, Harry lived large and I'm sure that Harry left an impression on a lot of people.

And some of them may not have the great impression that I do, (laughs) but I think as time progresses, people here in the community are going to recognize the artist more than the individual.

And that's what we really have to focus on is this amazing artist, the scope and volume of this work that you're going to be seeing so overshadows anything an individual might have brought to the table.

This is literally a world-class collection, and I would love to see this community of Cody jump on board with us, and the State of Wyoming 'cause Cody can't do it by itself.

The state has got to get in.

And I have to say, state agencies, state funders, people like the Cultural Trust Fund, The Humanities Council have all been very generous in their grants and helping us take care of this collection.

And that's the first thing we had to do.

We had to preserve it.

Now we wanna share it and we wanna share it here.

- It feels to me like the clock is ticking.

- The clock is ticking.

There are pressures on both the family and the Institute to make a proper home for the collection.

We need to do that.

And I've mentioned, my first and foremost priority is protecting and preserving this collection.

Now, I would like to do it here, but preserving and protecting it has to be my first obligation.

- Well, I wish you and the Institute the best of luck.

- Thank you, Craig.

- Not many people have seen what we've seen today.

- People will get to see things that have never been seen in public before.

- And I hope that that becomes the case and it would be great if it were to happen here in Wyoming.

Gerald Shippen and Mark Harris, thank you so much for joining us.

We look forward now to sharing a slice of world famous Harry Jackson's work now with our viewers.

Stay tuned.

(light cinematic sound) - I'm Rebecca Weed.

I'm a contract conservator for The Harry Jackson Institute in Cody, Wyoming.

We have 5,000 pieces of artwork, both bronzes, sketches, sketchbooks, drawings of Harry Jackson's, and I'm gonna show you a few of them, and what we're doing with them to keep them safe.

So this portfolio that I'm showing you, we receive this as a gift in 2018, as it is in this box with marker and ballpoint pen on it and masking tape.

And we are now in charge of preserving it and keeping it safe so that future generations can look at it for research.

So what I'm gonna do is open this up here, show you what we're kind of looking at.

Let's see.

To start out, this big stack, there's 78 pieces in here and these are all drawings, a few collages, a few paintings that Harry did between the ages of four and 10.

I think actually, there might be some from when he was 14, but he was a little kid.

And a lot of them are on like menus from restaurants and napkins and old bills that his mom received.

So they're really fascinating.

To us, I think, one of the most fascinating things is that he kept them.

I think we all did this stuff when we were little, but how many people collected it and still had it later in life?

I think it's amazing.

So, this is the work that he did while he was in the military.

He kept sketchbooks and did a lot of paintings on his own while he was in the military as a young soldier.

And then later on, when high up saw what he was doing, they hired him to be an artist for the military.

So this is the portfolio that it was originally in, and these are more presentation portfolios, so these aren't really safe to keep anything in it.

And as you can see the inside of it, it's really discolored and starting to fall apart, which you don't want to happen to the actual artwork.

So you wanna move it to a box, more like this.

And in here we have a sketchbook, and it had started to fall apart.

So this is the cover of the sketchbook with some labeling on it.

Sketches on the back.

This is a pencil and ink that he completed.

There's notes on it where he makes note of what he's looking at.

Most of the stuff in the sketchbook isn't dated, he was pretty good at signing just about everything, even a sketchbook pages, but we rely on the outside of the sketchbook for the date, or sometimes just context, how it fits in with everything else he was doing.

But this is the kind of thing he was doing when he was hired, so this is in '43.

So this is when he was actually hired to go and record everything that he saw.

A lot of what he got was that slice of life.

So this is one that we are dealing with currently that is an unstretched canvas.

He painted this in 1943, so he was working for the military at the time.

And this is more of that kind of promotional combat oil painting, more for the military as an advertisement, I suppose you could say.

But this is probably one of his more cathartic paintings were later in life, after he had come back from the military and become an artist and done various different things with his life, he went back and started dealing with some of the combat that he actually experienced.

So he was sent, as a very young man and an artist, to an island, Betio Island, where he experienced pretty horrific battle.

At the end of the day, his day there, there were 8,000 bodies on the ground.

And this is one of his friends.

This guy was named Whitey, and this was a guy that was right next to him.

So I believe he did this in 2002, when he first, initially went back to Betio Island to kind of deal with some of the ghosts, and he came back and started doing paintings about the combat that he did there.

So this is one of, I'm not sure, maybe four, of the same painting that he did.

These are all guns pointing at one man, and he's painted green to represent all warriors, anybody who ever experiences war.

And there's various flags back here of different nationalities, and the ground is red and there's other bodies, but it was really cathartic for him to do this particular painting.

He said that it did open up a lot for him and let him deal with some of the stuff that he experienced there, 'cause this was a close friend and it happened right in front of him.

And this was the moment that he received his traumatic brain injury.

A piece of mortar hit the back of his head at the exact same time that a piece of mortar hit the back of this guy's head, but this man wasn't quite as lucky, and he carried that with him for years and years before he came back and painted this one.

So this is the beginnings of "Stampede".

So as you can see, this is just the underpainting, it's not finished.

You have the shadow of a horse here, you have a lot of figures and chaos going around along over here.

This horse is the same one that's in here.

And eventually, as he paints these, they start building up.

There is this one over here that is, I believe, the most complete one that we have.

So there's a horse being dropped down into a ditch, a rider falling off, there's a man in a yellow slicker off to the side, but it's a very dark and gloomy image and there's a stampede happening.

This eventually becomes a much larger mural sized painting.

And then the one next to it is the finished version of "Range Burial", which is the end of the story of "The Stampede".

So part of "The Stampede" and part of "The Range Burial", in that body are also included bronzes, and not just any bronzes.

So this is a beautiful bronze he did of "The Stampede".

You can see the horse coming down here, the rider falling off, this is the guy in the yellow slicker.

And then he expanded on that and had to bring in some of his AbEx experience and start experimenting more, and seeing what he could do with this by adding these wild paint colors over the entire thing, kind of adding to the chaos and the cacophony that this image is.

As well as that he did bronzes of "Range Burial".

So over here we have "The Range Burial", one of them.

Beautiful work.

He was just amazing in how far he pushed himself.

So this is another bronze that goes along with "The Stampede".

So he was pushing it even further, adding more elements, more bronze, more painting, more sculpting, trying to really fill out everything that this image could be.

So more and more and more, and it keeps going.

I mean, how much he added to this, and explored with it, and experimented with it.

So these works all correspond with this larger wall piece that's behind me.

It's comprised of 56 paintings that are all put together into one big piece.

It's titled "Betio Light and War".

So they all started as these abstract images that he was doing on small pieces of yellowed paper, they're mostly oils and acrylics and inks and they're all very different, but they hold a lot of similarities.

These ones are only a small portion of them that are framed in white here.

He then took those images and he laid them out on a light table.

And I believe he probably had various intentions, I don't think he was like an arrow planning on this, but what he ended up doing is laying the images on a light table with the gray scale and the color controls, and then doing an actual painting of that view of the image on the light table, then putting them all together.

So each of those pieces landed themselves here.

This is one painting, there's 56 of them put together.

What you see behind here, this grid work and the gray scale and the color control patches, those are all hand painted as part of one piece.

And each of them talks about a different individual that was on the island with him when he experienced the battle there on Betio.

The installation of this was impressive.

They built a whole wall behind it with different attachments to lift these up and take them over.

We are tasked with figuring out how we're gonna take care of it, and eventually, possibly, take it down and store it an hopefully send it somewhere so that people can see it outside of this building.

He painted this in 2002 and it's never been seen outside of this building.

The first time anybody viewed it was in 2015.

So this painting is called "The White Figure".

This was the first abstract expressionist experience that he had with painting.

He had gone back to New York and he met up with Jackson Pollock and started talking about things, and at that point he was actually taking some lessons in dealing with different people in the art world, and he was still teaching himself, but still learning from the greater world.

And he went back to his studio and decided to try out AbEx and this is what he came up with.

And he said himself that it was like a battle just painting it, it was like experiencing battle all over again, laying this paint out.

From there, he had a lot more finesse when it came to the AbEx world.

And it wasn't too much long after that that he went to Italy and started turning back to his figurative works, thinking more about realism, and then he came out West and started doing Western work, but he never left that AbEx feeling behind.

(cinematic sound) - [Voice Over 2] Funding for this program is made possible in part by The Wyoming Humanities Council, helping Wyoming take a closer look at life through the humanities, thinkwy.org, and by the members of the WyomingPBS Foundation.

Thank you for your support.