In sharp architectural contrast is the Colorado Building just to the east, which, despite its contemporary appearance is the older building, constructed in 1905. Very forward looking with its great expanses of show windows on both the first and second floors, the building for most of its life housed the Jamieson Department Store, until recently one of the most venerable retailers in town. Founded in 1889 and famed throughout Southern Colorado and Northeast New Mexico for the fine quality of its goods, it was for decades the “Neiman Marcus” of the area, where women bought special dresses and brides “registered” their wish lists. Not until the 1980s did it go the way of most small town department stores.
It seems appropriate that a building associated with such fine quality should become the permanent home of the A.R. Mitchell Memorial Museum of Western Art, which moved here in 1991. “The Mitchell” soon became a top cultural attraction, bringing to the little city exhibits by many of the best contemporary Western artists, as well as displaying its own permanent collection, which is built around more than 250 original paintings by Trinidad’s Arthur Roy Mitchell. Mitchell, born in 1889 on a homestead just west of town, grew up about seven blocks from the museum, was briefly a cowhand on local ranches, and in the 1920s and ‘30s, operated in New York as one of the country’s most sought-after illustrators of western fiction magazines, producing over 160 magazine covers as well as book illustrations, and setting a style for fictionalized cowboys that Hollywood copied. In 1942, diagnosed with cancer, he came home to die, but lived another 35 years, teaching art at Trinidad State College and acting as the driving force behind the establishment of the Colorado Historical Society’s museum complex in Trinidad, of which he was the first curator.
Although he became almost as famous as a regional historian, he continually developed his art, which brought him many honors, including selection as one of the first academicians of the National Academy of Western Artists, election to the highly selective Cowboy Artists of America, and receipt of the Trustee’s Award from the National Cowboy Hall of Fame and Western Heritage Center. An increasingly irascible old coot, he got so he wouldn’t sell a painting except to people he liked (which was not many) and then sometimes only if they would let him tell them exactly where to hang it and how to light it. Consequently, when he died in 1977, he left a huge collection of unsold work, which the museum now has.
The museum’s 17,000 square feet also display original paintings by other well-known illustrators, friends of Mitchell, such as Harvey Dunn, Harold Von Schmidt, Nick Eggenhofer, and others. Mitchell’s eclectic accumulation of Western and Indian artifacts is in display cases and rotating exhibits of contemporary artists are usually on the mezzanine. On the third floor is the 1st Street Gallery, a space often utilized for rotating exhibits of art, summer arts and crafts classes for Trinidad youth, and other cultural activities.
