The things we talk about this show we pitched it as looking without evidence looking within. We are in that Historical Museum and its the largest Historical Museum in the state of texas if you count the number of artifacts cattle cowboys and culture. Urban west. Michael gore who was the fulltime curator and we set up the show both of us are native to kansas city suburb always interested in why this place felt so familiar to us as having grown up there and michael started looking at the number of objects in the plains Permanent Collection that related to kansas city and it turns out they were over 1000 object on today debates he pulled out so we started looking at what kind of objects there were and we found such a good array of variety of objects we thought we needed to do a show that told the sister city head of kansas city and amarillo. A lot of people expect that amarillo grew up looking to dallas and looking to denver or to houston but this closeness is basically around the train system and the cattle industry that drew those two cities together so we tell the story of that in this show. In 1870 they were being driven by the cowboys meaning walked across the plains like from texas to montana. For example long horns with the best kind of walking cattle for those drives but theyre not the best beef cattle so by 1887 the railroad had cut through this area and founded amarillo based on the railroads so as a city the deny exist until the railroads came through and by that time there was more shipping of the cattle on the rails rather than doing the drives anymore in those kinds of cattle scaly her first and the beef cattle that we think of. By the time kansas city and theyre willing quite the same affiliate row kansas citys Capital Market starting looming based on a cattle that was being raised in the panhandle so we kind of helped each other to grow the cattle in the train connecting the two. The other aspect is the culture and fashion and objects in the museum that tell the story of going to kansas city and finding goods and services that were bringing sophistication back here. Even the cowboys would go shopping and buy in kansas city. We dont have a local Business Owners that could sell it. Suppose i dont see the cowboys and i think people can understand beyond this area. Its a local history but also a regional and a national history. It was a number of levels. We have a newspaper from kansas city that is dated to the era of the border boom so borders town amarillo and in 1926 there was Oil Discovered in the town and there was a huge influx of investment money into amaryllis and urban space so what we have in this image is kansas city newspaper featuring its as the wonder city of the texas panhandle and this idea that the little amarillo city was the wonder city of the texas panhandle. That is something today sounds oldfashioned and that was very true back then. We also have this blueprint above and is by an architect who i think deserves his own study. His name is kai carr lender so what we have is an image of the United States with the city of amarillo thats larger than any other city and its showing the networking of amarillo as a crossroads for the United States and also says idea location for capital and industries and you can see the railroad between amara and kansas city is one straight shot of a line and its an even quicker line then to dallas. Houston isnt even on this map so the idea that this network between amarillo and kansas city about his whole show is about and how close those two cities were for a number of reasons based on the cattle trade at that time so these two objects help tell that story. We are standing in front of another object. This is a reproduction of the original object but it is a blueprint for a Christmas Card design by carey carr lender who was an artist that was an architect. He was born in the kansas city area. Studied for a few years in pratte kansas for college and then he got a job at the Santa Fe Railroad so when he did not get the race he wanted after a few years are very good work on the santa fe he decided to start out a new merlot and filed his own firm and lived out life being in amarillo citizen and he built so much of the landscape in this area. What were looking at here is a designed by him. Heres his signature but is also of the skyline of amarillo. One of the fact i think people would not know is that after oil was discovered in the region in 1926, there was a building boom that happened in the urban space of amarillo and there were more skyscrapers that were directed in amarillo between 1926 and 1930 than any other city and United States. Mind you these skyscrapers were one of the things we did during the promotion of this show us think back to the musical of oklahoma. When theyre saying about everything is up today in kansas city to talk about the line that the building is a seven stories so this idea of scraping the sky at only seven stories is something for the period. It seems out of date for us but what you can see is hes very proud of the skyline. He designed a number of things here. He designed the Baptist Church and he also decided the fiscal building here but kansas city architects shepard foreign writer who also designed the house and many other buildings downtown amarillo designed the Amarillo Building and the rebuilding. Its one of the first buildings with a car garage attached to it so this was also the area where amara went from the horse and buggy to street cars to actual automobiles. Amara because it has to route 66 connection becomes an automobile city very quickly and you can see evidence even in the structures. I think the importance is to get the sense that this area and amarillo as a city is interesting because its a big urban center for a large rural area and so we were interested in how the development of cities and their urban landscape in the west occurred. The idea of kansas city being another city not as appreciated as it should be for its role in the United States developments of so you are tying those two together and people can understand beyond this area. Its a local history but also a regional history and also a national