Texas Standard listener Jennifer Bennett shares information about the Sid Richardson Museum in Fort Worth for the Standard’s Texas Museum Map series:
The Sid Richardson Museum is on Main Street. It’s just three blocks down from the Tarrant County Courthouse, the site where the original fort once stood. This is the same block of Main Street where “Longhair Jim” Courtright had his famous duel with Luke Short at the White Elephant Saloon. And just across the street and one door down, was the photo studio where the classic picture of Butch Cassidy, the Sundance Kid, and the rest of the Wild Bunch was taken.
An interior photo of the Sid Richardson Museum shows a saddle in the middle of a room filled with paintings. (Courtesy Jennifer Bennett)
The Sid Richardson is not a grand affair. Just a small, storefront museum almost exclusively filled with paintings by Frederic Remington and Charles Russell. Personally, I find it charming that one can take in the entire exhibit in a short period of time.
These works of art, collected and endowed to the world by oil tycoon Sid Richardson, capture the romance, action, desolation, and grit of the American West.
My favorites include Remington’s “The Love Call,” where a young, Native man stands under a tree by cover of night and plays his flute to summon his sweetheart, and Russell’s “Man’s Weapons Are Useless When Nature Goes Armed,” as two hunters return to camp to find it’s been invaded by skunks.
The painting “Man’s Weapons Are Useless” hangs on the wall of the Sid Richardson Museum. (Courtesy Jennifer Bennett)
Great programming is available for children and adults, including “Wild West Wits” trivia and “Tea and Talk.”
Admission is always free.
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