Just outside the Briscoe Western Art Museum in downtown San Antonio is the Amy & V.H. McNutt Sculpture Garden. It’s shady, so even on a hot day it was pleasant for a short visit.
V.H. McNutt was a mining engineer who made a fortune in potash in New Mexico in the 1920s. Later he and his wife owned a large ranch near San Antonio. The McNutt Foundation is in San Antonio even now.
Many of the sculptures involve Native American themes. Such as “Strength of the Maker” (1990) by Denny Haskew.
“Bird Woman” (2001) by Richard Greeves.
“Rainmaker” (1998) by John Coleman.
“Dance of the Eagle” (1986) by Allan Houser.
“Crow Brave with Fan” (1985) by Doug Hyde. Unlike most of the other pieces in the courtyard, a work in granite.
“Chief Quanah Parker” by Jim Reno. No date noted that I could see, but I suppose before 2008, since the artist died that year.
Quanah Parker had a prominent place at the small museum at Palo Dura Canyon State Park that I visited earlier this year. He was one of the leaders the last of the Comanches’ big raids, the Battle of Adobe Walls, in 1874.
The statue’s a good one, and he certainly looks like a Comanche war chief, though it would be more interesting if Quanah Parker’s statue looked like this.
This is “Thank You Lord” (2011) by Harold Holden.
And a detail from “El Caporal” (2015) by Enrique Guerra.
Detail because he appears to be driving some bronze cattle, not pictured here, ahead of him.