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Truettner, William H and Nancy K. Anderson, eds.   The West as America: Reinterpreting Images of the Frontier, 1820-1920. Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1991.
 

This book is a companion piece to a highly controversial exhibition held in 1991 at the National Museum of American Art, curated by William Truettner.  The exhibition challenged the Manifest Destiny, positivistic viewpoint of the conquest of America's West as it deconstructed publicly cherished myths and popular stereotypes promulgated by period paintings and photographs.  The research put forth within the exhibition, merely reflective of recent anthropological, historical, and sociological academic study, challenged the hegemony of America's creation myth as being heroic and noble.  Public reaction was very strong.  A divided and sometimes hostile viewing audience prompted the curator to tone down, even replace, certain exhibition labels.  The catalogue incorporates the six main themes of the show in both content and images. [R. Schoeberlein]