Collections of the Great Plains Art Museum
Patricia J. and Stanley H. Broder Collection
Over a number of years, Patricia and Stanley Broder donated works of art to the Great Plains Art Museum. Their generous donations number over fifty paintings and encompass a range of Native American artworks impressive in overall quality and variety. The artists come from diverse Native American backgrounds and include Navajo, Hopi, Pueblo, Cherokee, and Plains Indians such as Osage, Kiowa, Comanche, and Sioux. The paintings included in the Broder Collection date from the early twentieth century to the 1980s.
The artwork included in the Broder Collection includes a variety of styles and subject matter often seen in artists in the Southwest and Plains region. The collection includes examples of paintings by early self-taught Pueblo painters such as Tonita Pena (1895-1949), as well as later Pueblo painters such as Percy Tsisete Sandy (1918-1974 ) who received art training. Members of the Artist Hopid, Delbridge Honanie (1946- ), Milland Lomakema, Sr. (1941- ), Fred Kabotie (1900-1986), and Terrance Talaswaima (1939- ) are also well represented in the Broder Collection. Formed in 1973, this group of Hopi artists finds inspiration in both the traditional designs used by their forbearers in centuries past as well as stylistic innovations of outstanding 20 th century artists. In addition to these prominent Hopi artists, the collection includes work by notable Navajo artists Harrison Begay (1917- ) and Andy Tsinajinne (1918-2000). Plains Indian artists in the collection include Carl Woodring (1920-1985) (Osage) and Robbie McMurtry (1950- ) (Comanche). Many of these artists draw upon knowledge of their own group’s art forms such as pottery, mural paintings, petroglyphs, and hide paintings and integrate motifs and symbols from these sources into their art.
The paintings in the Broder Collection also include the variety of media used by Native American artists: watercolor, gouache, acrylic, casein, tempera, chalk and ink. Subjects focus on specialized types of dancers, kachinas, ceremonies, hunters, children, and animals. Stylistic approaches in the various works also differ, from strongly representational to highly conceptual and abstract.
Patricia Janis Broder passed away December 21, 2002 and is survived by her husband Stanley, daughter Helen, two sons Clifford and Peter, and three grandchildren Janis, Rachel and William. Stanley Broder is living in New Jersey.
Richard Lane Book Collection
Richard Lane (1927-1987) had many passions. Books were his heart and soul, his profession and his avocation. The thousands of volumes in his personal library mark the growth of a boy with an insatiable appetite for words to a linguist specializing in Medieval English language and literature. He taught courses in Chaucer, Shakespeare, History of the English Language, Literature of the American West, and Science Fiction, and was a Fellow of the Center for Great Plains Studies. The Richard Lane Collection donated to the Great Plains Art Museum consists of over 500 books.A short list of books included in the Richard Lane Book Collection:
Western Union by Zane Grey
The Mark of Zorro by Johnston McCulley
Hopalong Cassidy by Clarence Mulford
The Searchers by Alan LeMay
The Big Sky by A.B. Guthrie Jr.
The Bloody Bozeman by Dorothy Johnson
Hanging Judge by Elmer Kelton
Hondo by Louis L’Amour
Life of Tom Horn by Tom Horn
Virginian by Owen Wister
Regina Book Collection
The Regina collection is a comprehensive research library of Canadian Plains material consisting of 1109 items. It covers the period of mass European settlement in the Prairie and Parkland regions, the Canadian half of the Great Plains, from the late nineteenth century to the present. The Collection includes standard works in the fields of agriculture, economics, political science, history, sociology, religion, and other topics. Fiction and poetry are represented in the Collection as well. Many of the volumes are now out of print and some are rare first editions.
The Regina Collection was compiled by Richard Spafford, an antiquarian book dealer and archivist from Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada. In compiling the collection, Mr. Spafford was guided principally by two bibliographies, Bruce Baden Peel’s A Bibliography of the Prairie Provinces to 1953 with Biographical Index and Jill Robinson’s Seas of Earth: An Annotated Bibliography of Saskatchewan Literature as it Relates to the Environment as well as other standard bibliographies. The Regina Collection includes all the most important books in the two bibliographies and a total of approximately 90 percent of the works listed, plus a sampling of other related books.
The Regina Collection complements the existing collections of the Nebraska University Libraries and the Center for Great Plains Studies. The acquisition of this collection has proven to strengthen the position of the University as a regional and international research center as well as contributing to ongoing programs and existing research.
