James Museum of Western and Wildlife Art

 Perhaps the most unexpected but pleasant discovery of our trip to Tampa/Saint Pete was the James Museum of Western and Wildlife Art in Saint Petersburg.  First, it is massive.  Second, it is loaded with great art.  I only had 90 minutes for the visit.  Got to go back another time!

John Nieto, an artist of Hispanic and Mescalero Apache descent, painted this colorful acrylic work, 

Coyote Medicine (1992).

This is John Coleman's Explorer Artists Series (2004-2010).  Coleman created this series of figurative sculptures based on 1830s paintings of Native leaders by explorer-artists Karl Bodmer and George Catlin. 

Hyrum Joe is a Native artist.  His heritage is a mixture of Diné (Navajo), Nuuchi-u (Southern Ute), Hopituh Sinom (Hopi) and Ndeé (White Mountain Apache).  This painting is My Grandfather Sings- Canyon De Chelley (2009).

This 1991 alabaster sculpture,  Death Song at Wounded Knee, is by Adam Fortunate Eagle, an Ojibwe (Chippewa).  Wounded Knee Creek in southwestern South Dakota was the site of the final major clash in 1890 between the U.S. government and Plains Indians. More than 250 unarmed Lakota men, women, and children were killed in the Wounded Knee Massacre and buried in a mass grave at the site.

In 1866, one year after the Civil War ended, the U.S. Congress created six all-Black soldier regiments to help patrol and expand the Western frontier. Plains Indians called them "Buffalo Soldiers." Here, in Called to Duty (2016), Ezra Tucker embraces the name by incorporating clouds taking the form of buffalo. 

Roy Grinnell's 1994 painting, Mountain Lyin' Tales, shows cowboys sharing tall tales around the campfire after a long day in the saddle.  

The images above are all drawn from the museum's western artworks. 

 There are also many rooms with wonderful paintings and sculptures of wildlife.  I have to go back!

Over forty years of collecting, Tom James and his wife acquired more than 3,000 works of western and wildlife art.  Tom was the son of the founder of Saint Petersburg's Raymond James Financial, which grew under Tom's four decade leadership into a major international financial services firm.  After Tom left his CEO position in 2010, he planned this museum and opened it in 2018.