This post will employ many photos. If you’ve been here, you know Wall Drug is a very large complex, with many different stores and dining areas, and with many great pieces of art, sculpture and photographs mixed in. They are everywhere. And it costs nothing to get in and see it all! It is quite an idea to have Museum quality pieces scattered throughout and used as decorations. It introduces a lot of people to art and sculpture. 🤔 I learned a lot.

For example, the stained glass in this dining room ceiling is gorgeous and the walls are full of art work. In addition, the divider within this room, contains sculptures of horses, cowboys, bears, Indians and all depict Western themes. The detail in the statues was incredible.The bottom level sculptures were all enclosed because of their famous artists. I recognized the name and now I can’t remember it!!! 🤦 Remington and Charles Russell!

The Art Work and Illustrations.

As I was looking for more information about some of the artists and artwork that was on display at Wall Drug, I noticed some of the Western artwork was considered Western illustrations. I was curious as to what the distinction was. So Western artwork is something that the artist usually observed personally and recreated it in detail, as he wished .

An illustration can be something that was observed personally or something that was entirely made up and created. In addition there is usually an editor that oversees the creation and can intervene to change the picture. It may be such as the horse faces a different direction or the person is on the ground instead of on the horse, etc. There were a number of illustrations in the artwork here They were created for a magazine article or a book cover. Either way, they were beautiful pictures.

Some of the artists that are on display are Frederic Remington, Charles Russell, Dean Cornwell, Harvey Dunn and N.C. Wyeth. I happened across a site online in which an individual DID take pictures of some of the artwork at Wall Drug 😬 I did screenshots of them and will provide some of them here. I did see all of these pictures there.

I searched online to find this painting and could not! He has a couple of other train station paintings and then a variety of others but I could not find this one. It was one of my favorites as so much was taking place in this painting and it was reflected on the faces and expressions of everyone in it. An interesting painting. (He did not get a good photo of it so it’s not real clear that’s why I was looking for the original online.)

This concludes this edition of the Art at Wall Drug. I know learning about all the artworks and sculptures on display gave me a different and much more positive impression of Wall Drug. All because I had lots of time because of the weather. 🤔😊

The next part will be their History section. It’s located in what’s called Wall Drug’s Backyard.

By separating them out like this, it’s easy to skip the whole section if you’re not interested. 😊