The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 105, July 2001 - April, 2002 Page: 390

Southwestern Historical Quarterly

narrative, and landscape. Troccoli does not venture to evaluate the art works in
the Anschutz Collection and she avoids comparison of quality among paintings
in the collection and of ability among artists represented in the collection. In an
effort to avoid examining the art through a Western history chronology, she
claims a new approach and admits that she is "less interested in ethnographic
'accuracy' than in esthetic matters." She embarks on a stylistic analysis of the art-
works in the exhibition. That line of discussion wanes, thereby demonstrating
that the genre of Western art presents only a small range of stylistic evolution in
artworks dating from 1820o to the present. In an effort to give credence to Amer-
ican art, Dr. Troccoli cites examples of European antecedents, which tend to
support the assumption that American art is somehow inferior to or derivative of
European art. This view is antithetical to the focus and intention of the Anschutz
Collection and serves to diminish her thesis.
Troccoli carefully sidesteps the association of Western painting with the depic-
tion of accurate historic detail, and, therefore, the study lacks the combination
of both stylistic and historical analysis with the interpretation of content. Troc-
coli intended to unite the Western art genre with mainstream American art his-
tory. Certainly, as a collector, Philip Anschutz understood that the Western story
is the American story. Painters and the American West should have reminded us of
this.
National Museum of Wildlife Art Francine Carraro
The Texas Folklore Society, I971-2ooo. Volume III. By Francis Edward Abernethy.
(Denton: University of North Texas, 2000. Pp. viii+232. Preface, index.
ISBN 1-57441-122-5. $29.95, cloth.)
Anyone reading this review should be cautioned that the reviewer is not only a
longtime friend of the author, but a past president of the organization whose
history is being reviewed. That being said, the reviewer will state up front, with
virtually no qualms, that he regards the product as an admirable achievement.
Objectively? Let's hope so.
Here is the concluding volume of three in which Francis Abernethy has
wrapped up the ninety-year history of the Texas Folklore Society, which he has
served as secretary-editor for thirty. Patently no one else could have written this
narrative, and he has poured heart and soul into it. Ab frankly admits that this
was the most difficult volume to write because he was in the big middle of it all.
He assumed the secretary-editorship from Wilson Hudson of the University of
Texas English faculty in 1971.
Upon assuming his new office, Abernethy had to officiate over an increase
in annual membership dues to $7.50 from $5.oo. But there were also prob-
lems of getting the Society's annual publication into print and in distribution.
These were not solved overnight-and they never seem to be permanently
solved.
Abernethy carries forward the Society's story in the context of successive presi-
dential terms of office. At the outset and at the conclusion of each of these en-
tries, he tells us what was taking place in the country and in the world at the
time. We even learn the prices paid for hotel rooms at conference sites. The So-

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