Cowgirl Hall of Fame

February 2010

The National Cowgirl Museum and Hall of Fame

Rodeo Cowgirl by C. M. Russell - Wikimedia

The National Cowgirl Museum and Hall of Fame honors and celebrates women, past and present, whose lives exemplify the courage, resilience, and independence that helped shape the American West, and fosters an appreciation of the ideals and spirit of self-reliance they inspire.

The Museum started in 1975 in the basement of the Deaf Smith County Library in Hereford, Texas but moved to Fort Worth in 1994. The Museum then relocated into its 33,000 square-foot permanent location in the Fort Worth Cultural District on June 9, 2002.

The style of the building is compatible with the modern style of the Will Rogers Memorial Center. The exterior is constructed with brick and cast stone with terra cotta finials formed in a ‘desert rose’ motif and glazed in vibrant colors. A large painted mural by Richard Haas, bas-relief sculpture panels, and a series of hand-carved cast relief panels show scenes related to the Cowgirl’s story and depict thematic messages such as ‘East Meets West’ and ‘Saddle Your Own Horse’ that represent the stories told inside the Museum.

The Museum’s interior is designed to provide a clear circulation path for the visitor and to create central spaces that can be used for after-hours functions. In addition to administrative offices, the building also includes four gallery areas, a multipurpose theater, hands-on children's areas, a flexible exhibit space, research library, and a retail store. A 45 foot, high-domed rotunda serves as a constant orienting point. Two grand staircases provide exceptional overlooks into the rotunda, and are made of different metal finishes and colors with art deco inspired ornamental railings. Doors of stained walnut mark the entrance to the theater. Western themes are found throughout including native flowers, horse heads and the desert rose motif.

The purpose of the Hall of Fame is to preserve the history and highlight the impact of western women living roughly from the mid-1800s to the present: the artists and writers, champions and competitive performers, entertainers, ranchers (stewards of land and livestock), trailblazers and pioneers. To date, there have been 190 women inducted into the National Cowgirl Hall of Fame, with inspiring women added annually. Legendary women in the Hall of Fame include painter Georgia O’Keeffe; Sacagawea, principal guide for the Lewis and Clark expedition; sharpshooter Annie Oakley; Hollywood icon Dale Evans; Enid Justin, creator of the multi-million dollar Nocona Boot Company and Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor.

Annie Oakley, with a gun Buffalo Bill gave her 1922 - Wikimedia

New "Hall of Fame" Gallery

In September The National Cowgirl Museum and Hall of Fame announced the opening of a new Hall of Fame Gallery. This new permanent addition to the museum will highlight 4 to 5 honorees during four-month rotations.

The new gallery will feature exhibits on recent inductees and stories on honorees and their artifacts. In addition, interactive kiosks with photos, videos and other in-depth information will let visitors explore honorees’ artifacts not on display in the Museum. The first exhibit rotation will discuss the Hall of Fame in general and will recognize honorees in five broad categories: Champions and Competitive Performers; Ranchers (Stewards of Land and Livestock); Entertainers; Artists and Writers; and Trailblazers and Pioneers. Specifically, this inaugural exhibition will highlight Georgie Sicking, Pamela Harr, Faye Blackstone, Louise Massey Mabie, and Velma Johnston, “Wild Horse Annie.” The Hall of Fame Gallery will display the wide range of abilities and talents of the 190 women honored in the Hall of Fame.

“The new gallery is vital to the Museum and helps us further our mission to honor the remarkable women inducted into the Hall of Fame each year,” said Patricia Riley, executive director of the Museum. “This gallery gives us the opportunity to let visitors see personal artifacts and learn more about these extraordinary women.”

Further, new galleries will debut throughout 2010. The updated Kinship with the Land Gallery was unveiled in October 2009, and tells the story of the cowgirl and her connection to the land and livestock, with features on women from prominent and historic ranches.

Newly Inducted - Former First Lady Laura Bush to Receive Gloria Lupton Tennison Pioneer Award

The National Cowgirl Museum and Hall of Fame announced Deborah Copenhaver Fellows, Kay Whittaker Young, Mary Jane Colter and Cornelia “Ninia” Wadsworth Ritchie as recent inductees to the Hall of Fame. Laura W. Bush received the Gloria Lupton Tennison Pioneer Award. All five women were honored during the 34th Annual Induction Luncheon Ceremony on last October at the Will Rogers Memorial Center in Fort Worth, Texas.

The Gloria Lupton Tennison Pioneer Award, established in 1999, is awarded to an individual who has pioneered new approaches to public service in the areas of business, law, sports, the arts or humanitarian causes. This award recognizes the difficulty in creating new avenues of service, while applauding the determination and trailblazing efforts of those who have successfully created programs. Previous award recipients include philanthropist, Nancy Lee Bass; second lady of the United States and author, Lynne Cheney; and Presidential Medal of Freedom winner and diplomat, Anne Armstrong.

Deborah Copenhaver Fellows was ranch-raised in northern Idaho and grew up with a passion for horses and an avid interest in art. Both her father and brother won World Championships in professional rodeo, and Deborah herself traveled the professional circuit as a barrel racer. She won the title of Miss Rodeo Washington and was runner-up for Miss Rodeo America.

Fellows earned her degree in Fine Arts and paid her way through professional education and independent studies in Italy where she learned the techniques of the European Masters.

In the post-Vietnam period, Deborah won competitions to create veteran memorials including the Inland Northwest Vietnam Veterans Memorial, the Montana Vietnam Veterans Memorial and the Washington State Korean War Veterans Memorial. Other monuments include Bing Crosby, Benny Binion, James Irvine, Henry Kaiser, and Boy Scouts of America as well as famous horse portraiture. She was elected to lifetime membership in the National Sculpture Society in 2009. She is also an invited artist in the Museum's annual Heart of the West Art Exhibition and Sale.

Fellows has long been inspired by pioneer women and ranch figures and has made important statements in bronze sculpture about the unspoken heroes, the women of the West.

Kay Whittaker Young has been riding her entire life, and began competing at the professional level at age 12. A member of several organizations, Young has sat on the board of Barrel Futurities of America since the inception of the organization. Additionally, Young served as Vice President and President of the GRA/WPRA. As president she promoted barrel racing to rodeo committees and sought recognition for it as a standard event and lobbied for increased purses.

Young made seven trips to the National Finals Rodeo and competed on five horses at the finals. She has held barrel racing clinics throughout the United States and Brazil. Annually, Young works with and trains more than 75 horses on her ranch in Overbrook, Oklahoma. A true testament to Young’s dedication, she insists on riding each horse in every clinic she hosts. In the barrel racing industry, she is known not only for her countless awards and titles, but also for her passion of the sport, her patience in training, and her role as a mentor to many women.

Mary Jane Colter (1869-1958), one of the few female architects of her era, has eleven buildings on the National Register of Historic Places and five of these buildings have been designated National Historic Landmarks. Known for creating structures that were in harmony with the natural environment, she developed a style now referred to as “National Park Service Rustic,” which does not interfere with, or interrupt the natural scene.

In her teen years, after the passing of her father, she went to design school in San Francisco. Upon graduation, she began a fifteen year career as an art teacher at Mechanic Arts High School in Minnesota. In the summer of 1902, after expressing an interest in working for the Harvey Company (of the famous Harvey Houses) she was contracted to work as decorator for her first Harvey Company project. This began her long association with the company as designer and architect. For the next four decades, working in often rugged conditions, Colter completed more than 20 projects for Fred Harvey including a series of landmark hotels and commercial lodges throughout the southwest.

Cornelia “Ninia” Wadsworth Ritchie is the 4^th generation owner of the JA Ranch, the oldest ranch established in the Texas Panhandle, and one still in the hands of the heirs of one of the original founders. Named for her great-grandmother, Ritchie is carrying on the tradition of Cornelia Adair, who is celebrated for the passionate care she took of the ranch. Cornelia and her husband, John Adair, partnered in business with the legendary cattleman, Charles Goodnight. Together, in 1876, they formed the JA Ranch using John Adair’s initials as the brand.

Ritchie’s approach to ranch management centers on integrity and sustainable success. An active part of the management team, she lives at the ranch headquarters at Paloduro, and is dedicated to maintaining the 130 years of family history of preserving the land and improving the livestock. Ritchie is a true steward of the land; in 1999, she placed the entire JA Ranch in Colorado under a conservation easement. Her son, Andrew Montgomery Bivins is the 5^th generation of this family to actively carry on these traditions.

Laura W. Bush was the 2009 recipient of the Gloria Lupton Tennison Pioneer Award for decades-long service in the area of literacy. While serving as first lady of Texas from 1995 – 2000, she implemented several pioneering initiatives: Take Time For Kids, an awareness campaign to educate parents and caregivers on parenting; family literacy, through cooperation with the Barbara Bush Foundation for Family Literacy, she urged Texas communities to establish family literacy programs; Reach Out and Read, a pediatric reading program; and Ready to Read, an early childhood educational program. Additionally, she raised funds for public libraries through her establishment of the Texas Book Festival and established the First Lady's Family Literacy Initiative, which encouraged families to read together. One of the most popular first ladies, Laura Bush was involved in topics of both national and global concern during her tenure as first lady from 2001-2009. In September 2001, she joined the Library of Congress to launch the first National Book Festival. The Festival has grown each year, drawing more than 120,000 book-lovers from across the nation to Washington, D.C. in 2008. In 2006, Bush hosted leaders from around the world for the White House Conference on Advancing Global Literacy, showcasing successful, culturally aware literacy programs from a diversity of countries. Her leadership of this effort led to her current role as Honorary Ambassador for the United Nations Literacy Decade.

Patricia Riley

Patricia Riley was appointed executive director of the National Cowgirl Museum and Hall of Fame in 1996 following its move from Hereford, Texas. She piloted the planning, design, fundraising and opening of the new museum in June 2002. As only the second executive director in the Museum’s 34 year history, Riley has built upon the work started by founding director Margaret Formby, and has established the Museum on a national level. Dedicated to continuously educating people on the remarkable women represented in the Museum, Riley and her staff endeavor to preserve and celebrate these women and their importance to America’s western history through education programming, exhibitions, oral history work and the Museum’s research library. Under her leadership acclaimed programs such as Cowgirl University and the Heart of the West Art Show have brought national attention to the Museum and the Honorees involved.

In 2002 Riley was also named Executive Director of the Cattle Raisers Museum as that institution was embarking on a transition and building project similar to the Cowgirl Museum. The culmination of Riley’s work will be the opening of the Cattle Raisers Museum located inside the magnificent new Fort Worth Museum of Science and History complex, which will open in November 2009. Instrumental in creating the partnership with the Fort Worth Museum of Science and History, Riley has played a key role in the building project and overseen all aspects of the Cattle Raisers Museum project.

Trained as a journalist, Riley was a television producer and documentary filmmaker prior to moving to Fort Worth. She is married to Kelly Riley, whose mother and grandmother are both honorees in the Cowgirl Museum’s Hall of Fame.

Diana Vela

Diana Vela, Ph.D., is the director of exhibits and education at the National Cowgirl Museum and Hall of Fame. With more than 20 years experience in the education field, she has lectured and published widely in the areas of frontier women writers and the American West.

Vela’s work has focused on archival research and recovering stories from women who forged paths as trailblazers, pioneers, ranchers and competitors. As head of the Museum’s education and exhibits department, Vela handles a variety of outreach efforts including symposiums about historical western women, presenting at panels and conferences and archival development. Additionally, she is responsible for managing publishing efforts, Hall of Fame Honoree initiatives, Cowgirl University, School Services and gallery content.

Furthermore, Vela assisted in the process to receive approval from the State Department of Education for the Cowgirl Museum to become a continuing professional education provider for the state of Texas. Vela was most recently involved in the creation of a historic marker in Santa Fe, New Mexico honoring a nun who traveled the Santa Fe Trail with Archbishop Lamy to establish one of the first educational institutions for women in that territory.

A graduate of Texas Christian University, Vela studied early American women writers with a specialization in frontier women writers of the Southwest, and the female experience in the West.

Tricia Taylor Dixon

Tricia Taylor Dixon is the curator of the National Cowgirl Museum and Hall of Fame. Dixon began her career with the Museum in 2004 as collections manager/registrar, and was quickly promoted to her current position.

Dixon is primarily responsible for managing artifact and photograph collections and permanent galleries. She has also coordinated the annual Heart of the West Art Exhibition and Sale since its inception in 2004. Additionally, Dixon supervises the Heart of the West and Acquisitions committees for the Museum, and is responsible for coordinating special exhibits including the upcoming exhibition: Georgia O’Keeffe and the Far Away: Nature and Image.

A graduate of the University of North Texas, Dixon received a bachelor of arts in American History and a masters of arts in Applied History. She also completed studies in French and German while studying in Switzerland.

The successful 2005 Texas Flags exhibition was coordinated by Dixon and was seen by thousands of school children. In 2006, she coordinated the successful “Ride: A Global Adventure” exhibition in partnership with the Fort Worth Museum of Science and History, which also included the world premiere of the IMAX movie, “Ride Around the World.”

Dixon is a member of the American Association of Museums, Texas Association of Museums, Phi Alpha Theta and the American Association for State and Local History.

National Cowgirl Museum & Hall of Fame Gift Shop

The National Cowgirl Museum & Hall of Fame Gift Shop opened on June 9, 2002. With hundreds of items on display, the gift shop offers a wide selection of merchandise ranging from jewelry and house wares to handbags and books.

Collections of vibrant handbags and edgy fashion apparel are artistically arranged throughout the store, creating a colorful atmosphere that attracts the interests of the vintage and the edgy cowgirl. Other merchandise includes engaging, artistic and historical product, as well as books and music that have been completed by honorees of the Hall of Fame, including Georgie Connell Sicking, Barbara Van Cleve and Georgia O’Keeffe.

The National Cowgirl Museum and Hall Fame focuses on preserving the history, and highlighting the impact of Western women from the mid-1800’s to present who embody the spirit of the Cowgirl. The women include artists and writers, champions and competitive performers, entertainers, ranchers (stewards of the land and livestock), trailblazers and pioneers. The Cowgirl Shop prides itself in recognizing the women that have been honored by the Museum and there is truly something for every visitor to the museum, including items for the home, great fashion pieces, such as boots and hats, and designer accessories from Rocki Gorman, Coreen Cordova and Frederico.

Jewelry from the Gift Shop

Hours: Monday – Sunday 10:00 a.m. – 5:00 p.m.

Location: 1720 Gendy Street, Fort Worth, Texas 76107

Phone: (817) 336-4475 or (800) 476-FAME

Admission: Adult - $10 (Age 13+)

Child - $8 (Ages 3-12)

Senior Citizen - $8

Group rates and docent tours are available with two week advance reservations

Web site: www.cowgirl.net

Galleries: Hall of Fame Gallery, featuring five categories:

* Champions and Competitive Performers

* Ranchers (Stewards of Land and Livestock)

* Entertainers

* Pioneers and Trailblazers

* Artists and Writers

Claiming the Spotlight

Into the Arena

Kinship with the Land

Spirit of the Cowgirl Theatre

Connie Reeves Discovery Corral

Accessibility: All Museum areas are wheelchair and handicap accessible. Wheelchairs are available to patrons at no charge on a first-come, first-serve basis. Handicapped parking spaces are located in the parking lot on the west side of the Museum.

About the Museum: The National Cowgirl Museum and Hall of Fame honors and celebrates women, past and present, whose lives exemplify the courage, resilience, and independence that helped shape the American West, and fosters an appreciation of the ideals and spirit of self-reliance they inspire.