Gary Fillmore to lecture on the life of artist Marjorie Reed March 13 at the Phippen Museum
March 10, 2010
PRESCOTT – Join author, art collector, and gallery owner, Gary Fillmore, at the Phippen Museum on Saturday, March 13 at 1 p.m. as he discusses the life and loves of artist Marjorie Reed.
Reed was a prominent Western artist who is best known for her paintings of the Butterfield-Overland Stage Trail. She made her living solely as a freelance artist for more than 65 years and left behind a significant body of work. Her most distinctive legacy is a series of 85 paintings depicting various stops and scenes along the Butterfield Overland Stage route from San Francisco to Tipton, Missouri. Reed’s life was every bit as colorful as her art. She was a prodigy who began working as a freelance graphic artist at the age of fourteen. In 1944, Reed headed to the desert and spent the rest of her life in some of the remotest areas of California, Arizona, and Montana, chronicling what was left of the “Old West.”
Gary Fillmore spent eighteen years working in corporate America before his love of art collecting prompted him to retire and open the Blue Coyote Gallery in 2002. Specializing in historical Arizona and Southern California desert artists, Fillmore has published several biographies on various artists. A decade long passion for collecting the work of Marjorie Reed led him to write the book, All Aboard! The Life and Works of Marjorie Reed. Today he is an art dealer and appraiser in Cave Creek, Arizona.
This lecture is presented as part of the Phippen Museum’s All Aboard! Exhibit featuring a wide variety of Marjorie Reed’s work from different periods of her lengthy career. Of particular note are six paintings on loan from the Arizona Historical Society from Reed’s Arizona Butterfield Overland Stage series. So come out to the Phippen Museum on March 13 and help celebrate this unique American Western artist and her amazing career!
The Phippen Museum opened in 1984 and was named after Prescott resident and founding member of the Cowboy Artists of America, George Phippen. The Museum’s mission is to preserve and exhibit museum quality Western art, and educate the public about the unique heritage, history, mythology, and influence of the American West through art. Museum admission is $5.00 for adults; $4.00 for seniors, students, and AAA members; children under twelve and Museum Members are free. The Museum is located just a few minutes north of downtown Prescott, at 4701 Highway 89 North. For additional information please call 928 778-1385 or visit our website at www.phippenartmuseum.org.