The National Cowgirl Museum & Hall of Fame, dark for nearly three weeks while crews finished a $19 million expansion, reopens Saturday, Nov. 7.
Members get a preview starting at 10 a.m., and doors open to the general public at noon, according to the museum. The Cultural District museum closed Oct. 19 to get ready.
What is new
The 16,000-square-foot addition gives the museum a front door that looks toward Dickies Arena, more gallery space, an event room that holds up to 250 people and a Cowgirl Carousel, CultureMap Fort Worth reported from the museum's announcements.
Two exhibitions will open with it:
- Miranda Lambert: Velvet Rodeo, the first show in a new Icons Gallery, displays the custom wardrobe the country singer wore during her Las Vegas residency. Lambert, herself a Cowgirl Hall of Fame honoree, said the outfits drew on Western pieces she photographed during an earlier visit to the museum.
- Gravity Defied: Trick Riders of The Cowgirl uses archival photographs of honorees who performed trick and fancy riding, a discipline women helped build in the Wild West show era. One image shows Tad Lucas performing the suicide drag at the 1948 Fort Worth Stock Show and Rodeo. Another catches Faye Blackstone in the Flyaway, one of three tricks she is credited with inventing.
Diana Vela, the museum's associate executive director of exhibits and education, curated the photo show from the archive's pictures and oral histories. "The risk is clear, the difficulty is clear, and yet you can feel the sheer joy emanating from these photographs," she said in the museum's release.
Executive Director Pat Riley said opening the Icons Gallery with Lambert's collection gives visitors "a new way to connect with a cowgirl they know and admire."
