ABSTRACT
The organizers of the show may have winced at the various accusations levelled at them, which included just about everything short of treason, but they shouldn’t have been surprised. They might have expected that their efforts to dismantle the cherished belief in the ‘winning of the West’ as America’s epic, and western art as its sublime portrayal, would draw blood. After all, the myth of Manifest Destiny is along with the landing of Columbus, Plymouth Rock and Thanksgiving, the Battle of the Alamo and the ‘War Between the States’, one of the foundation myths of American nationalism. Manifest Destiny was the belief, popular in the 1840s and ‘50s that the United States was impelled by providence to expand its territory westward. You don’t mess with such sacred subjects in the galleries of the governmentfunded Smithsonian Institution with impunity.
