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Library Issues Forum: "Watt Matthews of Lambshead"

George Bush Presidential Library and Museum
College Station, TX

Tuesday, December 5, 2017 - 7:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m. CST

Registration

Originally published in 1989, Wilson’s award winning photographic essay focuses on ninety-year-old Watt Matthews, manager and vital force behind the historic Lambshead Ranch. A 50,000-acre tract thirteen miles north of Albany, Texas, Lambshead is known for quality Hereford cattle, preservation of native wildlife, and restoration of the historic Matthews-Reynolds family ranch homes. Watt was the ninth and last child of pioneering parents who had established ranch on the banks of the Clear Fork of the Brazos in 1858, and, in the words of historian David McCullough, "created a family kingdom so large and still so true to its traditional way of life that visitors sometimes have to remind themselves that it is all real." Except for four years at Princeton, Watt spent his entire life on his family's ranch, which had remained its own separate world into the late twentieth century. Those days are beautifully chronicled in Wilson's book, which was described in The New York Times as “...a classic of Texas History.”

In the latest edition of the book, Wilson brings the story of Lambshead Ranch up to the present by writing of Watt's funeral and what has happened to the ranch since his death in 1997. A new foreword by Anne Wilkes Tucker, curator emeritus of photography at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, puts the book in the context of Wilson’s career as one of the most notable photographers of the contemporary American West.

Laura Wilson is a Dallas-based photographer and author whose work has appeared in the New York Times Magazine, London’s Sunday Times Magazine, Washington Post Magazine, New Yorker, Vanity Fair, GQ, and British Vogue.

The event is free, but seating is limited and reservations are recommended. A reception and book sale and signing will follow. For more information, contact reservations.bush@nara.gov or 979-691-4014.

All events listed in the calendar are free unless noted.

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