Enjoy The Warmth Of The High Desert Museum During Winter Nights In December (Photo) - 12/02/25

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

Tuesday, December 2, 2025

BEND, OR — It’s getting cold outside, but it’s warm and cozy indoors! Visit the warmth of the High Desert Museum Thursdays in December during Winter Nights—a special time of extended evening hours, engaging exhibitions, discounted rates and festive activities for all.

This year’s Winter Nights features:

• December 4: Footprints in the Snow — The first Winter Nights event will feature an exploration of the exhibition Soil Alive! Visitors are encouraged to wear their coziest boots and socks combo as they go on a scavenger hunt, decorate cookies, listen to stories and taste a few beverages. Rimrock Café will be open, serving dinner or a treat. Silver Sage Trading will also be open, offering complementary gift wrapping. A festive photo booth will be happening all evening long.
• December 11: Winter in the West – Wear your most adventurous sweater as you traverse the Drawn West: A History of Promoting Place exhibition, make your own map, brave a scavenger hunt and have a listen to a good yarn. There will be more regional beverage tastings, cookie decorating and storytelling, too. Silver Sage Trading—with complementary gift wrapping—and Rimrock Café will be open throughout the evening.
• December 18: Snowology! – For the final Winter Nights event, wrap yourself in the colors of the season (think silver or white–pajamas, onesies, track suits, all are welcome!) as you savor the ways winter can be warm and wonderful. Take family portraits at the photo booth, create your cookie masterpiece, explore beverages from regional craft vendors and more. Gift wrapping, storytelling and fun activity tables will be happening all evening.

Each evening at the Museum includes a selection of craft beverages for tasting from regional vendors such as Sunriver Brewing, Cascade Lakes Brewing, Avid Cider and Laurel Ridge Winery. For those who like a little sweet treat, Bonta Gelato will be scooping up delicious gelato for visitors each night, while Wildwood Chocolates will dish out sweets during the December 18 event.

All interior exhibitions are open for Winter Nights, including our newest exhibition, Drawn West, which opened on November 15. Featuring 50-plus artworks, maps and advertisements from the Museum’s extensive collection, the visually appealing exhibition explores a century of salesmanship. Learn more at highdesertmuseum.org/drawn-west.

In Soil Alive!, visitors of all ages step into the world beneath our feet in an immersive family-friendly exhibition. Visitors can see, touch, smell and even hear life underground. Featuring interactive wall-sized illustrations, Soil Alive! teaches visitors that healthy soil is the result of thousands of intricate relationships. Learn more at highdesertmuseum.org/soil-alive.

Winter Nights visitors can also explore Joe Feddersen: Earth, Water, Sky, which showcases close to 100 pieces from the Indigenous artist’s prolific 40-year career. Indigenous themes and contemporary life intertwine on baskets, prints, ceramics and glass. Organized by the Northwest Museum of Arts and Culture in Spokane, Washington, the exhibition celebrates the collective richness of Feddersen’s body of work. Discover more at highdesertmuseum.org/feddersen.

Admission for Winter Nights for adults is $12 in advance and $14 at the door. It’s always $6 for ages 3-12. Ages 2 and under—and Museum members—are free.

Visitors who arrive earlier in the day may stay for Winter Nights without paying additional admission. The outdoor exhibits are closed during Winter Nights. Regular winter hours are 10:00 am – 4:00 pm. More information and tickets are available at highdesertmuseum.org/winter-nights.

ABOUT THE MUSEUM: 

THE HIGH DESERT MUSEUM opened in Bend, Oregon in 1982. It brings together wildlife, cultures, art, history and the natural world to convey the wonder of North America’s High Desert. The Museum is a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization accredited by the American Alliance of Museums and the Association of Zoos & Aquariums, is a Smithsonian Affiliate, was the 2019 recipient of the Western Museums Association’s Charles Redd Award for Exhibition Excellence and was a 2021 recipient of the National Medal for Museum and Library Service. To learn more, visit highdesertmuseum.org and follow us on TikTok, Facebook and Instagram. 

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New Drawn West Exhibition Leverages Museum’s Inspiring Collection Of Western Maps And Art (Photo) - 11/11/25

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

Tuesday, November 11, 2025

BEND, OR — In the 19^th and early 20^th centuries, illustrated maps and advertisements functioned as powerful enticements to attract new inhabitants to the West. Opening Saturday, November 15 at the High Desert Museum, Drawn West: A History of Promoting Place explores a century of salesmanship, when artists and cartographers alike crafted an image of the West that depicted both fact and fiction.

The visually engaging exhibition will feature 50-plus maps, artworks and advertisements from the Museum’s extensive collections, including work by prominent Western artists Frederic Remington, Charles M. Russell, Edward B. Quigley and Edward Borein. Visitors will explore the decades of westward expansion, as roads, railroads, national parks and ski resorts began to sprout across the landscape.

“The Museum is privileged to care for some truly amazing historical documents and artworks, and this exhibition incorporates some truly engaging, special pieces from our vault,” said Museum Executive Director Dana Whitelaw, Ph.D. “Drawn West brings together these items into a visual history of how narratives about the West took shape.”

The West’s inspiring mountains, broad plateaus and rapid rivers have long evoked a strong connection to a mythic Western character. Artists often represented Western cultures and landscapes through a romantic lens, at times infusing myth into marketing.

Leveraging the Museum’s collection of 29,000 objects, the exhibition is divided into five sections: Westward Expansion, Railroads, Roads, Recreation and Reclamation–covering 100 years of change.

Each section dives into not only the national and legal challenges but also the regional response as more people moved West–all from the lens of the artists, cartographers and marketers of the time. From the growth of cities and towns along railways in the High Desert to the first Pendleton Round-Up in 1910 and the construction of the Bonneville Dam in the 1930s, each artwork, map and advertisement on display tells a story of near-constant change.

Some of the illustrated maps and art on display include Portrait of Crowfoot, a watercolor on paper by Russell, as well as Russell’s first article published in Harper’s Weekly in 1888, Caught in the Act. The article detailed the harsh realities of inadequate food supplies for Indigenous peoples forced onto reservations to make way for Euro-American settlement. Russell was known for publicly condemning the government-sponsored settlement of the West and its effect on Indigenous peoples. An original homestead deed from 1907 stands in stark contrast to the detailed painting.

Classic Bronco, a bronze statue by Edward B. Quigley (1895-1984), depicts a bucking bronco and his rider. Quigley used his experiences participating in numerous cattle drives with the Yakama Nation as an inspiration for his art. A copy of Lansford Hastings’ Emigrants Guide to Oregon and California (1845) and a Harper’s Weekly cover illustration by Remington are also on display.

“These are original works by prominent Western artists, some of whom, like Russell, have entire museums dedicated to them,” Whitelaw said. “From an 1841 map of Oregon Territory by Charles Wilkes to bronzes by artists like Quigley to ski advertisements from the 1950s, the exhibition is an engaging look into how the stories of the High Desert were told throughout time.”

From myths and marketing to fact and fiction, Drawn West will encourage visitors to look closer at a century of advertising place. Learn more at highdesertmuseum.org/drawn-west.

Drawn West: A History of Promoting Place is on view through June 28, 2026. The exhibition is made possible by the James F. and Marion L. Miller Foundation, 100.1 FM KBND and the Visit Central Oregon Future Fund.

ABOUT THE MUSEUM: 

The HIGH DESERT MUSEUM opened in Bend, Oregon in 1982. It brings together wildlife, cultures, art, history and the natural world to convey the wonder of North America’s High Desert. The Museum is a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization accredited by the American Alliance of Museums and the Association of Zoos & Aquariums, is a Smithsonian Affiliate, was the 2019 recipient of the Western Museums Association’s Charles Redd Award for Exhibition Excellence and was a 2021 recipient of the National Medal for Museum and Library Service. To learn more, visit highdesertmuseum.org and follow us on TikTok, Facebook and Instagram. 

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