The Petrie Institute of Western American Art

JR Henneman, Director and Curator of the Petrie Institute of Western American Art

JR Henneman received her doctoral degree in 19th century British and American art and visual culture at the University of Washington in 2016. Upon her arrival at the Denver Art Museum, JR co-curated Backstory: Western American Art in Context (2017) in collaboration with History Colorado and Natural Forces: Winslow Homer and Frederic Remington (2020) and contributed to The American West in Art: Selections from the Denver Art Museum (2020). More recently, she curated and published catalogs for Near East to Far West: Fictions of French and American Colonialism (2023), The Life and Art of Tokio Ueyama (2024), and Storytellers: The Blackfeet Nation and Charles M. Russell (2026).

Meg Selig, Senior Curatorial Assistant

Meg Selig is the Curatorial Assistant for the Petrie Institute of Western American Art. She has a master’s degree in art history and has been at the DAM since 2015. She has worked on several exhibitions including A Place in the Sun: The Southwest Paintings of Walter Ufer & E. Martin Hennings, The Western: An Epic in Art and Film, The Light Show, Near East to Far West: Fictions of French and American Colonialism, and Southwest Impressions: Prints from the Barbara J. Thompson Collection.

Lauren Thompson, Senior Interpretive Specialist

Lauren Thompson is Senior Interpretive Specialist for European and American Art Before 1900 and for the Petrie Institute of Western American Art at the Denver Art Museum, where she has been interpretation lead on Glory of Venice: Masterworks of the Renaissance, Near East to Far West: Fictions of French and American Colonialism, and The Honest Eye: Camille Pissarro's Impressionism, among other exhibitions. Prior to coming to the DAM, she served as director of programs at the Ann Arbor Art Center and worked at Museum of Fine Arts, Houston where she was named Museum Educator of the Year in 2011 by the Texas Art Education Association. Lauren received her bachelor's in art history and communication from Trinity University and her master's in art history from the University of Denver.

Grace McCormick, Curatorial Fellow

Grace McCormick received her master’s degree from American University in 2024 specializing in American art. She joined the Denver Art Museum in 2026 as the newest member of the Petrie Institute of Western American Art. Prior to the DAM, she was a curatorial assistant at The Phillips Collection in Washington, DC where she helped realize exhibitions of both modern and contemporary American art including Miro and the United States, William Gropper: Artist of the People, and Tomorrow the Sun Will Rise.

The Denver Art Museum has collected and exhibited western American art for more than sixty years. In the 1950s, led by Royal Hassrick, the museum’s first curator of Western art—and with grants from the Boettcher Foundation, the Frederick G. Bonfils Foundation, the Fred E. Gates Fund, and the Lawrence Phipps Foundation—the museum purchased a group of exceptional works by early artists in the American West including William Jacob Hays and Alfred Jacob Miller. Important acquisitions and gifts continued through the years, with the addition of significant work by Thomas Moran, Albert Bierstadt, Frederic Remington, Charles Marion Russell, and Charles Deas.

In 2001, the museum received a transformative gift of western American art from William Sr. and Dorothy Harmsen that substantially broadened the museum’s holdings. Joan Carpenter Troccoli, PhD, previously director of Gilcrease Museum, joined by associate curator Ann Daley, established an Institute of Western American Art and initiated the annual publication of the scholarly journal Western Passages. After an extraordinary lead gift from Tom and Jane Petrie to partially endow the department in 2007, the institute was renamed the Petrie Institute of Western American Art, and by 2010, the Petrie Institute was fully endowed with donations from dozens of contributors. With this endowment, the institute is able to continue sponsoring symposia, speakers, and publications that further our knowledge of Western American art.

In 2005, longtime museum director Peter H. Hassrick came out of retirement to become curator and director of the institute. He introduced an annual symposium that remains a signature program in addition to a rigorous schedule of exhibitions and publications through the Institute’s Western Passages series. In 2009, Thomas Brent Smith became the director and curator of the Petrie Institute of Western American Art. Under his leadership, the department embarked on an ambitious program of exhibitions, publications, and collection refinement that elevated the DAM’s reputation as a leader in western American art. In 2016, JR Henneman, PhD joined the curatorial team and expanded the collection through acquisition of works by women and artists of color. She became director of the department in 2021 and has continued to push the field through innovative exhibitions including Near East to Far West: Fictions of French and American Colonialism (2023) and Storytellers: The Blackfeet Nation and Charles M. Russell (2026).

In 2013, collector Henry Roath made a significant gift of more than 50 western paintings and sculptures, including works by Frederic Remington, Thomas Moran, and artists associated with the Taos Society of Artists. In 2014, the museum further expanded its holdings by acquiring the Southwest collection of Dr. George C. and Catherine M. Peck. When Mr. Roath died in 2024, he left a bequest of $17 million to fund acquisitions in western American art, to date the largest cash gift for acquisitions ever received by the DAM. In 2024, collector Barbara J. Thompson gifted over 100 fine art prints featuring the American Southwest to the Petrie Institute of Western American Art in honor of her grandfather, the printmaker C. A. Seward. In 2026, Tom and Jane Petrie announced a planned gift of a comprehensive collection of works by Charles M. Russell. Thanks to these extraordinary gifts and entrepreneurial collection management, the strengths of the western American art collection at the DAM include western bronzes, works on paper, 19^th century landscapes, the Taos Society of Artists, American modernism, and Charles M. Russell.

Since its inception, PIWAA has actively published significant contributions to the field of western American art, including award-winning exhibition catalogs. Western Passages, its signature scholarly series, includes essays on the art of the American West by curators and historians. A collection catalog, The American West in Art, provides an updated account of our growing collection with wide-ranging essays by Thomas Brent Smith, Jennifer R. Henneman, and Molly Medakovich.

Publications:

• West Point Points West, Vol. 1 of Western Passages (Denver Art Museum, 2002)
• Sweet on the West: How Candy Built a Colorado Treasure, Vol. 2 of Western Passages (Denver Art Museum, 2003)
• Redrawing Boundaries: Perspectives on Western American Art, Vol. 3 of Western Passages (Denver Art Museum, 2007)
• Heart of the West: New Painting and Sculpture of the American West, Vol. 4 of Western Passages (Denver Art Museum, 2007)
• Colorado: The Artist’s Muse, Vol. 5 of Western Passages (Denver Art Museum, 2008)
• Peter H. Hassrick and Elizabeth J. Cunningham, In Contemporary Rhythm: The Art of Ernest L. Blumenschein (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2008)
• Carol Clark, Charles Deas and 1840s America, Vol. 4 of The Charles M. Russell Center Series on Art and Photography of the American West (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2009)

• Joan Carpenter Troccoli, ed., The Masterworks of Charles M. Russell: A Retrospective of Paintings and Sculpture, Vol. 6 of The Charles M. Russell Center Series on Art and Photography of the American West (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2009)
• Charlie Russell and Friends, Vol. 6 of Western Passages (Denver Art Museum, 2010)
• Shaping the West: American Sculptors of the 19th Century, Vol. 7 of Western Passages (Denver Art Museum, 2010)
• Thomas Brent Smith, ed., Elevating Western American Art: Developing an Institute in the Cultural Capital of the Rockies, Vol. 8 of Western Passages (Denver Art Museum, 2012)
• Thomas Brent Smith, ed., Rocky Mountain Majesty: The Paintings of Charles Partridge Adams (Denver Art Museum, 2013)
• Decades: An Expanded Context for Western American Art, 1900–1940. Vol. 9 of Western Passages (Denver Art Museum, 2014)
• Thomas Brent Smith and Thayer Tolles, eds., The American West in Bronze, 1850–1925 (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2013)
• Thomas Brent Smith, ed., A Place in the Sun: The Southwest Paintings of Walter Ufer and E. Martin Hennings (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2016)
• Mary-Dailey Desmarais and Thomas Brent Smith, eds., Once Upon a Time . . . The Western: A New Frontier in Art and Film (Denver: Denver Art Museum; Milan: Five Continents Editions, 2017)
• Maggie Adler, Diana Greenwold, Jennifer R. Henneman, and Thomas Brent Smith, Homer Remington (Fort Worth: Amon Carter Museum of American Art; Denver: Denver Art Museum; Portland: Portland Museum of Art, Maine, 2020)
• Thomas Brent Smith and Jennifer R. Henneman, eds. The American West in Art: Selections from the Denver Art Museum, Vol. 10 of Western Passages (Denver: Denver Art Museum; Milan: Five Continents Editions, 2020)