Resounds: Arts And Culture On The High Plains

Betsy Gaines Quammen is the author of American Zion and True West, which won the 2024 Reading the West Book Award.

Juni Clark is the owner of Aunt Dofe’s Gallery in Willow Creek, Montana. She is a prominent businessperson in Billings, in addition to serving on the Yellowstone Art Museum Board of Trustees.

Born in Caracas, Venezuela, and raised in West Palm Beach, Florida, Mario Lopez is currently the CEO of the Billings Symphony.

The mission of Montana Chamber Music is to advance chamber music by delivering the highest quality performances in the Big Sky country, and to expand ongoing cultural relevance for all by engaging a diverse public.

Museum of the Rockies hosts a mix of primary and traveling exhibitions, including one of the most extensive and significant collections of dinosaur fossils in North America.

ZooMontana is a zoological/botanical garden, accredited arboretum and educational facility in Billings. It is dedicated to the conservation of wildlife throughout Montana and the 45th parallel of earth.

Incorporated over 55 years ago, the Western Heritage Center (WHC) began as a community center displaying a private collection of western artifacts in a historic building. Today, the center also provides outreach programs and walking tours, changing interactive exhibits, traveling displays, and a collection of over 400 oral histories and 40,000 historic items and photographs. Becky Jeter is the Exe...

Chase DeForest creates collaged and stitched leather artworks exploring themes related to the environment and the American West.

This House of Books was established in 2016 as an independent, full-service bookstore serving the region around Billings, MT.The bookstore was established as a cooperative with members buying shares to become co-owners with voting rights.

Montana legend Jonnie Jonckowski is the focus of Jonnie, an upcoming Montana PBS documentary. Her outsized accomplishments and challenges both in and out of the rodeo arena centers this new film.

The Yellowstone Art Museum has assisted the Billings Logan Airport art program, Art Under the Big Sky, with the selection and rotation of art exhibits in Concourse B.

A community leader, volunteer, and Executive Director of the largest performing arts center in a five-state region, Jan Dietrich has an impressive career in the nonprofit world. In the summer of 2026, Dietrich retires after ten years at the helm of the Alberta Bair Theater (ABT) in Billings.

Born and raised in Billings, Darren Hackey left his hometown to pursue a passion for music. After living across the country, coming home to Montana reignited his passion for the West. His love for western hats started in Texas, and he pursued the craft upon his return to his home state.

The Montana Performing Arts Consortium (MPAC) formed in 1981. Since then, the nonprofit has connected the arts to communities across Montana.

The C.M. Russell Museum contains more than 3,000 pieces of Western art in a complex that covers an entire city block. The Western art complex, a National Historic Landmark, includes Charlie Russell’s fully restored home and studio, where he lived and created for 24 years alongside wife and business partner Nancy Cooper Russell.

Czech-American writer and American Book Award winner Shann Ray teaches at Gonzaga University and poetry at Stanford University. He is a National Endowment for the Arts Fellow and group Fulbright recipient to South Africa.

Fourth-generation Montanan Russell Rowland is a critically acclaimed author of eight books. For over thirty years, Billings-based artist Gordon McConnell has created works derived from Western film stills and informed by his sustained study of the history of the American West and its representations in literature, art, film, and photography.

Yetta Rose Stein is the Executive Director of Elk River Arts & Lectures based in Livingston. She also serves as the Board Vice President for Opera Montana. Previously, she served as the Managing Editor for Hunger Mountain Review. Stein is a graduate of Hellgate High School and has an MFA from the Vermont College of Fine Arts.

Novelist, essayist, and poet Joe Wilkins was raised on a sheep ranch north of the Bull Mountains of eastern Montana. His novel The Entire Sky recently won the 2025 High Plains International Book Awards for Fiction.

Caroline Joan Peixoto is the co-founder and director of River Arts and Books. Her background in community arts and management aligns with her passion of creating spaces of beauty for people to explore and connect. She is an Azorean writer and mother living in the Beartooth Mountains.

Giano Cromley is the author of two indie young adult novels novels, The Prince of Infinite Space, and The Last Good Halloween, and a short story collection, What We Build Upon the Ruins. He is a recipient of an Artists Fellowship from the Illinois Arts Council and was a BookEnds Fellow with Stonybrook University.

Photographer Todd Forsgren lives in Billings, where he is an Associate Professor of Art at Rocky Mountain College and also serves as the director of the Ryniker-Morrison Gallery.

Matt Blakeslee was born and raised in Billings, MT. In 2015, Matt and his wife Kate started Art House Cinema, a new non-profit independent cinema to bring film and art opportunities to Billings.

The Buffalo Bill Center of the West based in Cody homes five museums and a research library. The Plains Indian Museum, The Buffalo Bill Museum, The Draper Natural History Museum, the Cody Firearms Museum, and the Whitney Western Art Museum provide thousands of visitors with a range of perspectives and education of the American West.

The Heart Mountain Interpretive Center preserves, memorializes, and provides education about the experiences of Japanese Americans incarcerated during WWII. The Center operates a world-class museum, historic site, and conference center, drives national programming, and inspires nonpartisan solutions to problems of our modern democracy.