Arts and Culture in Wyoming

Wyoming is generally not known for its fine arts. Rather, it’s the state's rugged beauty and myriad opportunities for outdoor activities such as rock climbing, skiing, and fishing that usually define it culturally. Wyomingites are used to hard work, cold weather, and lots of cattle and horses. As with much of the West, Wyoming has a long tradition of traveling shows, rodeos, and traditional music. Everyone from Native Americans to relocated East Coasters to gold speculators to farmers has contributed to Wyoming’s cultural heritage over the state's colorful history. HIGH ARTS The Wyoming Symphony Orchestra strives to enrich the cultural lives of adults, expand the musical horizons of children, and provide opportunities to musicians living in Wyoming and the Rocky Mountain West. Performances for the 2009/10 season included "A Ghoulish Symphony" on Halloween, a holiday concert by the Casper Children's Chorale, and a chamber orchestra made up of members of the Wyoming Symphony. The Cheyenne Symphony Orchestra performs in the Cheyenne Civic Center. In 1981 the symphony became a professional group. The orchestra and the chorus separated in 1988 when it the Cheyenne Symphony Orchestra. The chorus became the Capital Chorale and the Cheyenne Chamber Singers. First held in 1958, the annual Symphony Ball is one of the symphony’s major fundraising events. The University of Wyoming Department of Music's "Opera in a Gym" program offers theater and music performance to elementary school children. It has performed for over 3,000 children throughout Wyoming and South Dakota. The company stages operas specifically written or adapted for grades K–5. One of its signatures is that all actors wear high-top sneakers in productions. MUSIC Wyoming has a long musical tradition. Its Native American tribes incorporated drums and other instruments into their ceremonies and European settlers brought easily portable instruments like harmonicas, flutes, and fiddles. Military bands were very important to early Wyoming settlers and soldiers. Cowboys adopted northern European yodeling customs and originally used the technique to settle their herds. Yodeling was used to emphasize different parts of songs, and to change the meaning of songs. Nowadays there are many yodeling performances throughout the state and even yodeling contests. Cheyenne Frontier Days is a summer music festival begun in 1896. The festival features various crafts, dances, food, rodeos, and nightly music concerts. The annual State Fiddlers Championships showcases Wyoming’s fiddling talent. It features contests for everyone from kids to seniors, guest performers, twin fiddle teams, and "take no prisoners" competitions. The Grand Targhee Bluegrass Festival is known as the "grandfather" of bluegrass festivals in the northern Rockies. It offers music, food, arts & crafts, games, and other activities during its summer music festivals. The festival consistently attracts talented bluegrass professionals from around the world, and there are music jams and contests all weekend long. The Grand Teton Music Festival takes place for seven weeks every summer in Jackson Hole. TheFestival Orchestra plays classical music concerts and has had many internationally famous guest conductors for the festival. The festival also features chamber music, special performances, and unique musical programs all summer long. Casper, Wyoming, has a drum and bugle corps called Troopers. Casper's City Band performs free concerts during the summers in the city’s Washington Park. PERFORMING ARTS Along with the rest of the Rocky Mountain West, Wyoming has always depended on traveling theater companies playing in improvised "opera houses" with musical accompaniment by the locals. Cheyenne was lucky enough to be situated on the rail line between Chicago and San Francisco in the 19th century, so it enjoyed shows by many theatrical companies on their way from the East Coast to California. William Cody’s "Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show" got its start in Wyoming in 1883. Although born in Iowa Territory in 1846, "Buffalo" Bill helped found the Wyoming city of Cody in 1895. His traveling show created a sensation, touring the United States and also playing for months in Britain and parts of Europe. The WYO Theater in Sheridan was originally a vaudeville theater built in 1923. The theater offered live performances and films for nearly 60 years. Renovated in 1989, today it’s an architectural centerpiece and important performing arts facility in Sheridan. It is considered a "road house" and brings live entertainment, cultural enrichment, and educational opportunities to Wyoming much the way it did 90 years ago. FILM Like many state film commissions, the Wyoming Film Office offers a Film Industry Financial Incentive (FIFI) program to filmmakers who spend a minimum amount of money in the state during a film shoot. The Oscar-winning film Brokeback Mountain was partially filmed in Wyoming in 2005. The western classic Shane, starring Alan Ladd, was filmed in Wyoming in 1953, and Steven Spielberg's science-fiction film Close Encounters of the Third Kind was filmed on location at Devil's Tower. LITERARY ARTS Born in 1833, Eliza Stewart Boyd was the first woman in America to serve on a jury and the first teacher in the Laramie public schools. In 1870, Boyd joined the Wyoming Literary and Library Association organizing committee. She helped plan the group’s constitution and she was a charter member of the organization that promoted libraries and the arts in Wyoming. The "father of Western fiction," Owen Wister was a highly prolific 19th century writer who authored numerous books, plays, short stories, essays, and operas. Wister first visited Wyoming in 1885 and returned for several summers. Inspired by the American West in general and Wyoming in particular, he worked with western artist Frederic Remington, whom he met on an 1893 visit to Yellowstone. He is most famous for his 1902 novel The Virginian, which was reprinted 14 times in eight months. Since 1978, the University of Wyoming has published the annual literary and arts magazine Owen Wister Review. The Wyoming Arts Council's literature program supports the state's poets and writers via annual literary fellowships and grants. The council encourages new audiences by holding readings and workshops for Wyoming writers. It also awards the $1,000 Neltje Blanchan award to a Wyoming writer whose work is inspired by nature. The $1,000 Doubleday award goes to a Wyoming woman writer in any creative writing genre. Numerous cowboy poetry festivals are held year-round, preserving the cultural traditions of the rural West. The annual Wyoming Wintercamp Cowboy Poetry Gathering, for example, gives cowboy poets the chance to share their work every January in Powell. VISUAL ARTS The Wyoming Arts Council believes that the arts play an important role in the economic and social development of every community in Wyoming. The council distributes funding through two grant programs. The Grants to Organizations program supports performing, visual, literary, media, folk, or multi-disciplinary arts. Funded projects are community-based and do not have arts education as the primary focus. The Community Arts Partners program selects up to five communities every year to receive a matching grant for groups concentrating on arts-based community building, civic engagement, community planning, and use of public spaces for citizen quality-of-life enhancement. In addition, Art Works for Wyoming funds myriad forms of art in the form of grants. The Medicine Wheel National Historic Landmark overlooks the Big Horn Basin, 22 miles west of Burgess Junction. Designated a National Historic Landmark in 1970, the medicine wheel is an art form perfected by the Plains Indians between 300 to 800 years ago. It is unknown when or why the 74-foot diameter stone circle with 28 interior spokes was built. It is thought that the wheel was built for religious or astrological purposes sometime between 1200 and 1700 CE. Today Native Americans use it for religious ceremonies. Between 70 and 150 wheels are known to exist in Wyoming, South Dakota, Montana, Alberta, and Saskatchewan ARCHITECTURE Granger Stage Station is an adobe-covered stone structure that was an Overland Trail stage station built in the 1850s. The original station was called Ham's Fork and was a simple dugout. It was replaced by the stone structure in 1856 and renamed South Bend Station. Horace Greeley and Mark Twain are said to have passed through the station. The Pony Express used the station as a stopover in 1861–1862. When Union Pacific Railroad construction arrived in 1868, the station was renamed "Granger." The Ames Monument in Laramie is a 60-foot (18-m) high granite pyramid built by the Union Pacific Railroad Company in 1882. The pyramid, a memorial to the Ames brothers of Massachusetts, stands on the highest elevation of the original transcontinental route. Oakes and Oliver Ames were vital to the construction of the first coast-to-coast railroad in North America. The monument was designed by American architect Henry Hobson Richardson and is constructed with locally quarried, rough-hewn granite blocks typical of the Richardsonian style. Bas-relief pictures of the Ames brothers at the bottom of the monument are by the American sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens. Fort Laramie was the first garrisoned post in Wyoming and is now a National Historic Site. It is located next to the town of Fort Laramie near the convergence of the North Platte and Laramie rivers. It was the most important stop on all the large emigrant trails including the Oregon, Mormon, and California. The fort served as a vital military post during the Plains Indian Wars. Its 214 acres became a national monument in 1938 under President Franklin D. Roosevelt. The fort’s historic structures are reminders of the people, military and civilian, who passed through or lived at the fort. Many of the original structures have been restored and are available to visitors as part of the National Park system. HANDICRAFT AND FOLK ART Based in Cheyenne, the Folk and Traditional Arts Program identifies and documents Wyoming’s contemporary folk art and traditions, provides grants to community organizations, and awards mentoring grants. It also encourages public knowledge and appreciation of Wyoming’s traditional arts and artists via publications, documentary films, exhibits, and lectures Promotes public understanding of Plains Indian art, the Plains Indian Museum is part of the Buffalo Bill Historical Center in Cody. It teaches visitors the stories of the people behind the objects, why the objects were made, and how they were used in daily and ceremonial life. Most of the museum’s collection, which dates from 1880 to 1930, is connected to Northern Plains tribes—the Lakota, Crow, Arapaho, Shoshone, and Cheyenne. -World Trade Press