Listed below are events sponsored by the Potomac Corral of Westerners International, along with other local events relating to the American West:

WHEN: Thursday, May 27, 6:00 p.m. WHERE: The Boulevard Woodgrill in the Clarendon neighborhood of Arlington, at the intersection of Wilson Boulevard and North Fillmore Street, diagonally across the intersection from Whole Foods. The meeting will take place downstairs in the restaurant's Fillmore Room. Address: 2901 Wilson Boulevard, Arlington, Virginia 22201 Phone: 703.875.9663 Map: Click here METRORAIL: Orange Line, Clarendon Metro Stop. (Exit metro escalators and walk two blocks east on Wilson Boulevard. The restaurant is at the corner of Wilson Boulevard and N. Fillmore St.) METROBUS: Routes 38B, 4B, 4E, possibly others. PARKING: Ample on-street parking; free parking after 6:00 p.m. at the DHS parking garage (north off Wilson on Highland Street); $5.00 private parking lot immediately behind restaurant. ACCESSIBILITY: The Boulevard Woodgrill is a ground-floor restaurant with an elevator to facilitate access to the Fillmore Room. MENU: Dinners must be pre-ordered by Tuesday, May 25, 2010. Please RSVP to Mike Lawson (Jan_Earle@potomac-corral.org), and specify choice of entrée.Each dinner includes: non-alcoholic beverage choice of entrée dessert Entr ée choices are: Skirt steak frites: woodgrilled, tamarind-soy marinated, black angus skirt steak served over buttermilk mashed potatoes (cooked medium) Nordic salmon: flown in fresh from Bergen, Norway; served over buttermilk mashed potatoes, with grilled asparagus; finished with mimosa vinaigrette Hawaiian chicken: woodgrilled boneless chicken breast marinated in ginger and honey, served over cilantro rice and topped with pineapple salsa Vegetarian gateaux: sautéed artichoke, baby spinach, and roasted red pepper “cakes” served over a pool of pomodoro sauce accompanied by grilled asparagus Dinners must be pre-ordered by Tuesday, May 25, 2010. Please RSVP to Jan Earle (Jan_Earle@potomac-corral.org), and specify choice of entrée. CASH BAR: The Fillmore Room also features a cash bar. PRICE: Dinners are $37 per person, taxes, tip, and fees included. Please pay with cash or check on or before May 27, 2010. Checks should be payable to the Potomac Corral. PROGRAM: Dinner; Corral business; book auction; presentation on the American West. PRESENTATION: "Sentimental Journey: The Art of Alfred Jacob Miller"Alfred Jacob Miller was the first artist to journey into the heart of the Rocky Mountains and attend the annual fur traders' rendezvous. Miller executed some one hundred watercolor and pencil and ink sketches during the expedition that were the basis for nearly one thousand western genre paintings for a variety of patrons, both European and American. This talk will examine how Miller tailored his western subjects, particularly his sentimental scenes of trappers around the campfire, to suit the varying interests of his European and American patrons. SPEAKER: Lisa Strong received her Ph.D. in art history from Columbia University in 1998. She was assistant professor of American Art at James Madison University from 1999-2001 and has worked since then as an independent scholar in Washington, D.C. In 2009, she guest curated an exhibition on Alfred Jacob Miller for the Amon Carter Museum, which traveled to the Joslyn art museum in Omaha, Nebraska. Her book on Miller, Sentimental Journey: the Art of Alfred Jacob Miller, was published by the Carter in conjunction with the exhibition. She also consulted on the upcoming exhibition of the Bank of America's collection of Miller watercolors at the Nelson-Atkins Museum in Kansas City, Missouri. Currently she is managing the production of the Corcoran Gallery of Art's catalogue of itsAmerican paintings collection. OTHER: Please make a special effort to attend this meeting. It will be one of the two dinner meetings we have this year; the other one, of course being at the Cosmos Club this fall. Thanks! Click for a PDF flyer....

Other special items of note and Washington, DC, area events:

	Lecture: America's Dangerous Volcanoes. It has been thirty years since Mount Saint Helens reawakened, but what other volcanoes pose the threat of lava flows, toxic gases, volcanic ash, and mudflows? Bill Burton of the U.S. Geological Survey Volcano Hazards Program will discuss the efforts being made by the federal government to monitor volcanoes in the Pacific Northwest, Hawaii, and Yellowstone for eruptive activity. Wednesday, September 1, 2010, from 1:00 p.m. to 2:00 p.m. in the Rachel Carson Room, Main Interior Building, 1849 C Street, NW, Washington, D.C. Special Assistance – For those in need of special assistance (such as an interpreter for the hearing impaired) or inquiries regarding the handicapped entrance, please notify museum staff at (202) 208-4743 in advance of the program.
	Exhibition: Georgia O'Keeffe: Abstraction. Georgia O'Keeffe is one of canonical figures in 20th century American art. She is perhaps most famously associated with New Mexico and the American Southwest, where she resided in later life. Included in the exhibition are more than 100 paintings, drawings, and watercolors by O'Keeffe, dating from 1915 to the late 1970s, and 12 photographic portraits of her by her husband, Alfred Stieglitz. February 6 through May 9, 2010, at the Phillips Collection, 1600 21st St., NW, Washington, DC.
	Exhibition by Potomac Corral Member: Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Warriors: Photographs by Gertrude Käsebier, by Michelle Delaney. The exhibition is the result of a joint collaboration between the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History and the Buffalo Bill Historical Center in Cody, Wyoming.  The exhibition opened on April 10, 2010 and will be on view until August 8, 2010. There are plans for the exhibition to travel back to the National Museum of American History this fall.
	Obituary: Wilma Mankiller, the woman to be elected principal chief of the Cherokee Nation in modern times, whose leadership on social and financial issues made her tribe a national role model, died April 6, 2010, at her home in Oklahoma. She was 64 years old. Wilma Mankiller led the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma from 1985 to 1995. President Clinton awarded her the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1998, and she was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame in 1993. See the Washington Post's obituary for more information.
	Exhibition: Framing the West. Timothy H. O'Sullivan (1840–1882) was a photographer for two of the most ambitious geographical surveys of the nineteenth century. He traversed the mountain and desert regions of the western United States under the command of Clarence King and Lt. George M. Wheeler for six seasons between 1867 and 1874. O'Sullivan developed a forthright and rigorous style in response to the landscapes of the American West, and returned to Washington, D.C. with hundreds of photographs that revealed an artist whose reach far surpassed the demands of practical documentation. February 12, 2010 - May 9, 2010 at the Smithsonian American Art Museum.
	Lecture: When Art Worked: Art, the New Deal, and Democracy. Roger Kennedy, former Director of the National Park Service, and Director Emeritus of the National Museum of American History, will discuss how the New Deal put the arts, including painting, music, theater, and architecture, to work and its influence on the development of the National Park Service. Wednesday, March 10, 1:00 p.m. - 2:00 p.m., U.S. Department of the Interior Auditorium, 1849 C Street, NW, Washington, DC (view map). Photo ID required. Please call please call museum staff at (202) 208-4743 for any further questions.
	Film Screenings: Reel Portraits: John Ford’s Frontier. John Ford’s films helped shape America’s memory and imagination of the West. Ford also helped create an indelible portrait of the American cowboy in the form of John Wayne. See the West—and westerns—anew, at the National Portrait Gallery with hosts Frank Goodyear and Francis Flavin. Friday, November 20, at 7:00 p.m.: Fort Apache (1948). Saturday, November 21, at 2:00 p.m.: She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949). Saturday, November 21, at 5:00 p.m.: The Searchers (1956). The events are free and open to the public. The National Portrait Gallery Donald W. Reynolds Center for American Art and Portraiture, Eighth and G Streets, NW, Washington, DC.
	Lecture: Each week, a staff member of the National Portrait Gallery or a special guest speaker brings visitors face-to-face with a portrait by offering an insight into one person whose portrait hangs at the National Portrait Gallery. Join Department of the Interior historian Francis Flavin for a Face-to-Face gallery talk about Lakota social critic and public intellectual, Zitkala-Ša (Gertrude Bonnin). The lecture is free and open to the general public. Thursday, October 29, 2009, 6:00 – 6:30 p m. Meet at F Street Lobby.
	Lecture: Join Potomac Corral member Jill Jonnes for a PowerPoint talk and book signing followed by film (in English) "Sur les Traces de Gustave Eiffel." Her new book, Eiffel’s Tower, set in Belle Epoque Paris, tells the story of the tallest tower, the World’s Fair of 1889, art, Buffalo Bill, Annie Oakley, Indians, Edison, French esthetes, Americans in Paris, and the rise of colonial empire. The event will be at Letelier Theater, 3251 Prospect Street, NW, Georgetown, on Friday, September 18, at 6:30 p.m. The cost will be $12 for non-members of Alliance Française, and $8 for seniors. For reservations call (202) 234-7911. The event will be hosted by Alliance Française.
	Lecture: Join Erika Doss of the University of Notre Dame for a lecture "Indians, Corn, and the American West: Maynard Dixon’s New Deal Mural for the U.S. Department of the Interior." Doss will highlight the complexities surrounding government-funded art projects during the 1930s and discuss how American Artist Maynard Dixon negotiated with New Deal tastemakers in his depiction of modern American Indians and the American West. In 1937, the Treasury Department’s Section of Painting and Sculpture, a New Deal arts program, commissioned a two-panel mural for the Bureau of Indian Affairs offices in the Main Interior Building. Saturday, September 19th, 2:00 - 3:00 p.m. in the U.S. Department of the Interior Museum classroom, 1849 C Street, NW, Washington, D.C. Please bring a photo ID. Contact Diana Ziegler at (202) 208-4743 for further information.
	Corral News: Joseph Medicine Crow, former recipient of the Potomac Corral's Dykes Award, honored by President Obama. On Wednesday, August 12, 2009, President Obama bestowed the Presidential Medal of Freedom on Joseph Medicine Crow and 15 other luminaries. Joseph Medicine Crow is a member of the Crow Tribe of Montana. The Potomac Corral presented Medicine Crow with the Dykes Award in 2000 to recognize him for his outstanding contribution to Western affairs. Corral member Herman Viola worked with Medicine Crow to write Counting Coup: Becoming a Crow Chief on the Reservation and Beyond, a history of Joseph Medicine Crow's life.
	The 2009 annual meeting of the Western History Association will be in Denver, Colorado, on October7-10, 2009. Please feel welcome to attend the event, even if you are not a member of the WHA.
	Exhibition: Faces of the Frontier: Photographic Portraits from the American West, 1845-1924. The American West was dramatically reconstituted during the 80 years between the Mexican War and the passage of the Indian Citizenship Act in 1924. This exhibition tells the story of these changes through 100 portrait photographs of the defining men and women of this period. National Portrait Gallery, September 25, 2009 through January 24, 2010.
	PBS Documentary: The National Parks: America's Best Idea. Ken Burns filmed this documentary over the course of more than six years at some of nature's most spectacular locales — from Acadia to Yosemite, Yellowstone to the Grand Canyon, the Everglades of Florida to the Gates of the Arctic in Alaska. The National Parks: America's Best Idea is nonetheless a story of people from every conceivable background — rich and poor; famous and unknown; soldiers and scientists; natives and newcomers; idealists, artists and entrepreneurs; people who were willing to devote themselves to saving some precious portion of the land they loved, and in doing so reminded their fellow citizens of the full meaning of democracy. Coming to PBS September 27, 2009.
	Lecture: Contemporary Landscape Photography and the Legacy of Ansel Adams. For the past four decades, landscape photography has attempted to negotiate the space between Ansel Adam's vision of an Arcadian wilderness and the details of the neighboring landscape. Toby Jurovics, Curator of Photography at the Smithsonian America Museum, relates how contemporary photography is driven by the same concern and affection for the American landscape. Saturday, June 20, 2009, 2:00 p.m. - 3:00 p.m., at the Department of the Interior Museum, 1849 C Street, NW, Washington, D.C.
	Theater Performance: Adapted from the American classic by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Edna Ferber, GIANT is a daring new musical. Epic in vision and scope, swept with passion and violence, touched by humor and sorrow, Giant is the powerful story of a Texas rancher and his Virginia-born wife as they face increasing challenges in their marriage and family in an ever-changing American landscape. Through May 31, 2009, at the Signature Theater in Arlington, Virginia.
	Television Documentary: We Shall Remain is a groundbreaking mini-series and provocative multi-media project that establishes Native history as an essential part of American history. Five 90-minute documentaries spanning three hundred years tell the story of pivotal moments in U.S. history from the American Indian perspective. Coming April 2009, check local PBS listings for more information.
	Exhibition: Into the Sunset: Photography's Image of the American West examines how photography has pictured the idea of the American West from 1850 to the present. Photography's development coincided with the exploration and the settlement of the West, and their simultaneous rise resulted in a complex association that has shaped the perception of the West's physical and social landscape to this day. Into the Sunset brings together over 120 photographs made by a variety of photographers, including Robert Adams, John Baldessari, Dorothea Lange, Timothy O'Sullivan, Cindy Sherman, Joel Sternfeld, Edward Weston, and Carleton E. Watkins. March 29 through June 8, 2009, at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City.
	Lecture: One Hundred Summers: Kiowa Calendars and History Keeping will present one of those pictorial records, a recently discovered calendar kept by the Kiowa artist Silver Horn covering one hundred years of his tribe’s history from the summer of 1828 to the winter of 1928-29. The talk will explore how Kiowa concepts of representation and intellectual property have shaped the pictorial record. National Museum of the American Indian, Mall Museum Board Room, 5th Floor: Thursday, February 12, 12:00-1:30 p.m.
	Lecture: Dr. Michael Brodhead, member of the Potomac Corral, will deliver the lecture at the next meeting of the National Capital Chapter of the Lewis and Clark Trail Heritage Foundation on Tuesday, February 10, 2009. Dr. Brodhead will speak on the life of Elliot Coues, who studied the flora, fauna, and history of the American West. The Sumner School Museum and Archives, located at 1201 17th Street, N.W., Washington, D.C., will host the event. Doors open at 6:30 p.m., lecture starts at 7:00 p.m.
	The Indian Craft Shop at the Department of the Interior is presenting a special assemblage of American Indian jewelry and art depicting Flags & Eagles; this event will run from January 14 to January 23, 2009. The Indian Craft Shop will hold its Annual Sale from February 17 to February 27, 2009. The Indian Craft Shop is located at the U.S. Department of the Interior / 1849 C Street, NW / Washington, DC 20240 / (202) 208-4056. Please bring a photo ID for entrance to the building.
	Exhibition: A Century Ago - "They Came as Sovereign Leaders" On view at the National Museum of the American Indian are photographs of six great Native chiefs who participated in President Theodore Roosevelt's 1905 inaugural parade: Buckskin Charlie (Ute), American Horse (Oglala Sioux), Quanah Parker (Comanche), Geronimo (Chiricahua Apache), Hollow Horn Bear (Brule Sioux), and Little Plume (Piegan Blackfeet). While the chiefs were invited to add color to the parade, they arrived with their own concerns and actively sought President Roosevelt's attention to the needs of their people. The exhibition is on display January 14, 2009 - February 17, 2009.
	Exhibition: George de Forest Brush: The Indian Paintings. Combining extraordinary technical skills acquired in Paris with firsthand experience living among the Arapahoe, Shoshone, and Crow in Wyoming and Montana, George de Forest Brush (1854/1855 - 1941) created an important series of paintings of American Indians much celebrated by his contemporaries but rarely seen since. Many of these works were quickly acquired by major American collectors and have remained in private hands through several generations. The accompanying catalogue, incorporating new research, is the first scholarly study of this series. This exhibition will be on display at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., from September 14, 2008 to January 4, 2009.
	Exhibition: Georgia O'Keeffe and Ansel Adams: Natural Affinities. This exhibition celebrates the deep commitment to the American landscape by these two iconic artists—and how both artists intensely focused their attention on beauty in nature. The exhibition includes 43 paintings from public and private collections and 54 photographs borrowed primarily from the Center for Creative Photography in Tucson, Arizona. The exhibition runs from September 26, 2008 through January 4, 2009, at the Smithsonian American Art Museum.

Past Presentations of the Potomac Corral:

• April 2010: Tour of the Georgia O'Keeffe exhibit at the Phillips Collection in Washington, D.C.
• December 2009: Dr. Michael J. Brodhead, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, "A Western Historians Journey."
• October 2009: Dr. Frank Goodyear, Curator of Photography, National Portrait Gallery, "Faces of the Frontier" exhibition reception.
• May 2009: Elaine Weiss, author and speaker, "On the Trail of the Woman's Land Army in the American West."
• January 2009: Michelle Delaney, Curator of Photography, Smithsonian National Museum of American History, "Buffalo Bill's Wild West Warriors: Photographs by Gertrude Käsebier."
• November 2008: Nancy K. Anderson, Ph.D., Curator of American and British Paintings at the National Gallery of Art, "Coming East to Study the West" and "The Art of George de Forest Brush."
• September 2008: Frank Goodyear, Ph.D.,associate curator, National Portrait Gallery, "Revisiting the American West: The National Portrait Gallery’s forthcoming exhibition, 'The Frontier Remade: Photographic Portraits from the American West, 1845-1924.'"
• May 2008: Francis Flavin, Ph.D., historian, U.S. Department of the Interior, "Pens, Paintings, Panoramas, and Pixels: Documenting the Great Waterways of the American West."
• March 2008: William E. Foley, Professor Emeritus the University of Central Missouri, "Lewis and Clark's American Travels: The View From Europe." (Special joint meeting with the Lewis and Clark Heritage Trail Foundation)
• January 2008: Special farewell dinner held at Ted's Montana Grill in Arlington for Chet Hanson, longtime member and officer of the Potomac Corral.
• October 2007: Russell David Edmunds, Ph.D., Watson Professor of History, University of Texas at Dallas and President, The Western History Association, 2006-2007, "Moving With the Seasons, Not Fixed in Stone: The Evolution of Native American Identity."
• September 2007: Dr. Michael J. Brodhead, Ph.D., historian with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and President of the Council of America's Military Past (CAMP), “Elliott Coues: Naturalist and Frontier Historian."
• May 2007: Brad Patterson,former White House Special Assistant for Native American Programs, and Brian Patterson, Office Manager and Executive Chef of the Washington Office of the American Medical Association, "Kayaking the Big Rapids of the Colorado River."
• February 2007: Francis Flavin, Ph.D., historian, U.S. Department of the Interior, “Same Symbols, Different Stories: The Plains Indians and the History of the American Westward Expansion.”
• November 2006: Michael J. Broadhead, Ph.D., historian, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, “Isaac C. Parker: Federal Justice on the Frontier.”
• September 2006: Joseph Herring, historian and senior program officer, National Endowment for the Humanities, "'The ‘Noble Savage’ on Tour in Europe: The Iowa Indians and George Catlin in England and France, 1843-1845."
• May 2006: Bradley H. Patterson, Jr., former White House Special Assistant for Native American Programs, "Mountaineering in the West: Challenges to Mind, Body, and Spirit."