Autry National Center

Iconic Shirts From Brokeback Mountain on Display in Autry’s Imagination Gallery

Two intertwined shirts worn by Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal in the film represent struggle between heritage and acceptance in gay cowboy culture On display starting July 28, 2009

Los Angeles (July 27, 2009) — The Autry National Center is proud to announce the installation of the two intertwined shirts worn by Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal in the Focus Features 2005 groundbreaking film Brokeback Mountain, also starring Michelle Williams and Anne Hathaway. The shirts will be displayed as part of a reinstallation of the Contemporary Westerns case in the Autry's Imagination Gallery. Directed by Oscar winner Ang Lee, the film is adapted from the short story by Pulitzer Prize–winning author E. Annie Proulx in her Close Range: Wyoming Stories collection. The shirts are on loan from collector, producer, and sociopolitical commentator Tom Gregory.

The Western genre is an American art form that has played a crucial role in the development of American popular culture. Putting the Western into a larger historical context, the Imagination Gallery shows how the genre has evolved over the last one hundred years in response to social and cultural changes taking place in America. The iconic shirts are at the center of the Contemporary Westerns case in order to highlight Brokeback Mountain's significance in keeping the Western genre alive and thriving in the new millennium, and also to spotlight the LGBT community's struggle for safety and inclusion in the rural, Western communities from where many originate yet often feel forced to abandon.

Noted author Gregory Hinton conceived the idea of displaying the iconic shirts at the Autry while doing research for his fifth novel, Night Rodeo. "I noticed they were missing," Hinton told Gregory when he tracked him down on his website on New Year's Day 2009. Mr. Gregory, owner of the iconic shirts, won them in a 2006 charity auction. At their first meeting, Mr. Gregory confessed to Mr. Hinton that after he bought them, he had assumed he would be hearing from museums offering to display the shirts. No one called until Mr. Hinton did, three years later. "My feelings were hurt," Mr. Gregory admitted. "Not for me, but for the shirts, for what they represent," he said. On July 28, 2009, six months after the idea was first presented to the Autry, the intertwined shirts worn by Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal will be displayed at the museum.

Accompanying the shirts in the case are mannequins of Steve McQueen from the historical epic Tom Horn (1980) and Jeff Bridges from the revisionist Western Wild Bill (1995), along with the gun belts and revolvers worn by Chevy Chase, Steve Martin, and Martin Short in the comedy ¡Three Amigos! (1986). A special section devoted to the career of actor-director Clint Eastwood includes mannequins from Pale Rider (1985) and Unforgiven (1992).

The Autry seeks to explore all the peoples of the American West, and the exhibition of the shirts is part of a larger attempt to examine the LGBT community's contribution to the West and the Western genre. The Autry is currently in negotiations to house the archives of the International Gay Rodeo Association, and an October panel about what it means to be gay in the West is also in the works.

Brokeback Mountain Partial List of Awards

At the end of its theatrical run, Brokeback Mountain ranked eighth among the highest-grossing romantic dramas of all time.

Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay, and Best Original Score, Academy Award. Most nominations (eight) for the 78th Academy Awards.

BMI Film Music Award, BMI Film & TV Awards

Best American Film (Bedste amerikanske film), Bodil Awards

Best Film, Best Screenplay, and Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role- Jake Gyllenhaal, David Lean Award for Direction, British Academy of Film and Television Arts

Best Director, Best Picture, and Best Supporting Actress-Michelle Williams, Critics Choice Award

Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Motion Pictures, Directors Guild of America

Outstanding Film - Wide Release, GLAAD Media Award

Best Director- Motion Picture, Best Motion Picture - Drama, Best Original Song- Motion Picture, and Best Screenplay- Motion Picture, Golden Globe Award

Best Director, Best Feature, Independent Spirit Awards

Motion Picture Producer of the Year Award, Producers Guild of America

Golden Lion, Venice Film Festival

Best Adapted Screenplay, Writers Guild of America

About Tom Gregory

Los Angeles-based entertainment and sociopolitical commentator Tom Gregory's passion for classic Hollywood movies and collectibles reaches back to his childhood. At age four he acquired his first autographed Hollywood portrait photo, and he has since amassed one of the foremost collections in the world. Along with that passion is Gregory's core belief that the great, golden-era films have timeless values and plentiful examples of keep-your-chin-up grit that would well serve 21st-century viewers. By way of his presence as a media personality, and his thoughtful pieces on current events, social justice, and great entertainment, Gregory is a persuasive voice in connecting the dots between these ideas.

Gregory's ongoing media forums include his website, www.showbiztom.com, his regular Huffington Post column, and radio dispatches for Leeza Gibbons's internationally syndicated program, Hollywood Confidential. He also has been featured on CNN, E!, and Fox News, among other outlets, and is the face of OVGuide.com, the Internet's premier source for indexing online video content. Recently, Gregory expanded his reach to the Great White Way with his debut as a Broadway producer on the 2009 revival of Guys and Dolls, at the Nederlander Theatre.

About Gregory Hinton

The son of a country newspaper editor, Gregory Hinton was born in Wolf Point, Montana, on the Fort Peck Indian Reservation. Raised in Cody, Wyoming, Hinton graduated from the University of Colorado at Boulder, which he attended on a creative writing scholarship. He is the author of four critically acclaimed novels, including Cathedral City (2001), Desperate Hearts (2002), The Way Things Ought to Be (2003), and Santa Monica Canyon (2007). All of his books are endorsed by the American Library Association's Booklist, among other national reviews.

Hinton is also an independent filmmaker whose credits include It's My Party (1996), which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival, and Circuit (2003), which received international theatrical distribution.

For his fifth novel, Night Rodeo, Gregory Hinton has just completed a 2009 Spring Residency at the prestigious Ucross Foundation in Wyoming. To assist him in the completion of Night Rodeo, Hinton was awarded an honorarium by the Cody Institute of Western American Studies. Hinton recently spoke at the Buffalo Bill Historical Center in the Whitney Gallery of Western Art Summer Art Lecture Series. The title of his lecture was "Waiting for a Chinook: Searching for My Father—A Wyoming Country Editor."

About the Autry National Center

The Autry National Center is an intercultural history center dedicated to exploring the experiences and perceptions of the diverse peoples of the American West. The Autry celebrates the cultures of the American West through three institutions on two Los Angeles campuses: the Southwest Museum of the American Indian in Mt. Washington; the Museum of the American West in Griffith Park; and the Institute for the Study for the American West, which comprises the Braun Research Library and the Autry Library and is headquartered in Griffith Park.

The Autry National Center's hours of operation at its Griffith Park location have changed. The new weekday hours for the Autry's Museum of the American West are Tuesday through Friday, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. The museum store's new weekday hours are Tuesday through Friday, 10 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Saturday and Sunday hours for the museum and the museum store are 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. On Thursdays from July 1 to August 31, hours for the museum and museum store are 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. The museum and museum store will continue to be closed on Mondays.

Admission is $9 for adults, $5 for students and seniors 60+, $3 for children 3–12, and free for Autry members, veterans, and children 2 and under. Admission is free on the second Tuesday of every month.