Yellowstone Art Museum

The Yellowstone Art Museum in downtown Billings, Montana is the largest contemporary art museum in Montana.

The Yellowstone Art Center (now the Yellowstone Art Museum, or YAM) opened in October 1964 in the former Yellowstone County Jail. The construction of the county jail in 1884 was the first act of the newly instituted Yellowstone County government. It began as a small red brick structure. The partial basement of the jail functioned as storage, while the upper two floors served as cell blocks. In 1916, the county constructed additions to the west and north. In spite of Montana’s location in the Wild West, only one hanging, in 1918, is known to have taken place at the Yellowstone County Jail.

Operating in a region where the established museums emphasized Western genre art and historic artifacts, staff and volunteer leadership early on defined an alternate, wide-ranging mission. The goal was to develop a collection and programs that acknowledged the rich artistic practice occurring in the present. Today the YAM remains the only visual arts institution within an immense geographic area, which it serves with a very active program of changing exhibitions in the main galleries, adjunct programs for adults, curriculum-based art education, and community events and festivals. The YAM’s Annual Art Auction, begun in 1969, is the earliest contemporary art auction in a region that now boasts dozens that emulate the YAM. Summerfair, begun in 1979, was also the region’s first outdoor arts & crafts fair and holds its lead as one of the region’s finest.

Pride in the growing permanent collection (now numbering over 7,400 works of historic and contemporary regional art), has grown steadily as the YAM has matured. A concerted effort has been made to collect work from outstanding regional artists ranging from the internationally celebrated Rudy Autio, John Buck, Deborah Butterfield, Isabelle Johnson, Richard Notkin, Jaune Quick-to-See Smith, Ted Waddell, and Patrick Zentz to lesser-known and emerging artists. At the time the Museum began to collect, these artists were not represented as a group in any Montana museum. The popularity and growth of the “Montana Collection” has exceeded expectations. The acquisition of the Virginia Snook Collection, the largest gathering of the work of cowboy writer and illustrator Will James, has given the collection another popular and resonant dimension. The estate of Isabelle Johnson, a pioneering Montana Modernist, is unparalleled.

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