IT WAS ANOTHER BANNER year for Western art, with 2004’s capper coming as the Cowboy Artists of America posted yet another record in sales, grossing $2.6 million, some half-million more than the previous record, and welcoming 600 attendees at their Phoenix Art Museum opening on Oct. 22, the biggest turnout in five years.

But record sales at the major Western art shows this year was the norm, not an aberration. Most important shows held this year enjoyed record sales and turnout. Earlier in the year, the other of the nation’s two largest exhibitions of contemporary Western art, the Prix de West Invitational (held in Oklahoma City at the National Cowboy Museum), posted its highest numbers in 31 years as it drew nearly 1,000 guests to see 315 original works by 98 artists, selling for more than $2.1 million during the opening alone.

Shown on these pages are some top award-winners from the past year. Not shown is Howard Terpning’s The Force of Nature Humbles All Men, which has appeared twice already in this magazine in 2004. Terpning’s piece was Best of Show at the Masters of the American West, held at Autry National Center’s Museum of the American West, always on the first weekend in February. The Museum’s 2005 showing of its Masters of the American West exhibition and sale is set for Feb. 5 to Mar. 6.

And Much More.........