Weekend at the Museum: Portraits of the West

If you live anywhere near Washington, D.C. take a trip to the National Portrait Gallery to see their new portrait photography show, Faces of the Frontier. There are images of famous explorers and writers but there are also some folks you never heard of before. A personal favorite is Matilda Coxe Stevenson (1849-1915), a mineralogist. You can read her story and see a picture taken probably about the time of her wedding in 1872. Another woman who worked on the frontier was Alice Fletcher (1838-1923), an anthropologist. There is a lovely late 1860s tintype of her on display. The exhibit is also online.