Wichita Art Museum

The Wichita Art Museum occupies a striking 1977 Edward Larrabee Barnes building in the Museums on the River district west of downtown, and its collection of American art is genuinely impressive for a mid-size city. The holdings span three centuries, from colonial portraiture through the great names of American modernism — Edward Hopper, Georgia O'Keeffe, Mary Cassatt, and Winslow Homer are all represented — to contemporary work.

The Charles Russell collection is the jewel: an extensive group of paintings and bronzes documenting Plains Indian life and the cattle-drive era. General admission is free, making this one of the better free museums in the Great Plains region. The building's sculpture garden along the riverfront is pleasant in good weather, and the museum café is a reasonable lunch stop.

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The museum holds the largest public collection of works by Charles Russell outside Montana — 60 paintings and bronzes by the cowboy artist who documented the vanishing West in the late 19th century. The collection came to Wichita through the bequest of Roland Murdock, who assembled it over decades and left it to the city in 1931.