Charlie's Museum

Montana knew just how to honor a favorite painter of the Old West. Last year people throughout the state chipped in $75,000 for a museum to show the work of the late Charles Marion Russell, the cowboy who exchanged the lariat for the brush (TIME, Dec. 15). Last week the museum was dedicated in Great Falls, and if modest Charlie Russell could have seen it, he would have grumbled and told people they were making too much of a fuss.

The museum's name plate is a reproduction of Russell's neat signature. In the lobby of the modern brick building is a wall-sized photograph of the artist at work, looking uncomfortable in a suit coat and starched collar. Beyond is a gallery 40 feet long, for 135 of Russell's best paintings and sculptures from his earliest period up to his death in 1926: strictly realistic images of dust-churning buffalo herds and galloping Indian braves, rearing horses, squaws and cow pokes.

Some of the paintings are worth more than $10,000 now. But Charlie Russell, who never could understand why people were willing to pay big prices for his work, had given a good many of them to his friends for a pittance, or swapped them for a $6 grocery bill at the general store.

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