By Timothy R. Olsen ’09, ’18 M.B.A.

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Does Bigfoot exist?

It’s a question that’s sparked debate and fascinated minds for hundreds of years. And while there have been plenty of sightings of the mythical biped, no verified skeleton has ever been found.

Or has there? Afterall, Bigfoot bones will be on display at Utah State University this coming January. These bones, previously on display at the Wonders of the World Museum in California, were discovered and excavated in 1971 by Dr. George Gladstone.

A little further digging, however, reveals that Gladstone is a fictional persona created by artist Clayton Bailey, the Wonders of the World Museum a satirical display, and the bones themselves to be rather ceramic in nature.

“His sculptures … are things that almost call to be touched and manipulated,” says Danielle Stewart, the Nora Eccles Harrison Museum of Art curator and head of academic initiatives. “They seem like things a child would imagine. He’s very in touch with this inner child that lives in all of us and finds ways to tap into that and make it concrete so that we can experience those fantasies through the world of art.”

And one of those creations, a set of Bigfoot bones, will be a main attraction at NEHMA’s upcoming “The Lure and Lore of the West” exhibit that will run from January 2026 to May 2027. The exhibit will explore the margins between Western lore and reality, touching on subjects such as natural resources and the West’s rugged landscapes, heroes and legends of the era, and myths and monsters.

However, the bones’ journey to USU was quite a winding one that included spending decades back in the ground after their initial “discovery.”

Following Bailey’s death in June 2020, it was concluded the bones had been reburied sometime in the 1980s or ’90s. Using a “bone detector” created by Bailey’s alter ego, Dr. Gladstone, a group comprised of family members, local art experts, and anthropologists was able to find the bones and re-excavate them in April 2021.

“In a way, the piece is both the bones themselves and the total experience that he’s created around it,” Stewart says. “He’s laying out a trail of breadcrumbs, but he doesn’t know exactly how his works are going to be encountered. He’s very inventive and imaginative and playful, and enjoyed building alternate worlds that we can inhabit for a minute.”

And that ability to create an immersive experience is exactly what NEHMA hopes to produce with its upcoming exhibit and why Bailey’s work is such a great fit for it. The West’s vast horizons have embodied adventure for generations, filled with larger-than-life characters both real — such as Utah’s own Butch Cassidy — and fictional, like Pecos Bill.

Historically, the West is often portrayed as a wild, isolated place. From Mountain Men to Native Americans to European settlers, myths and legends were shared, intermingled, and grew — many persisting to modern times. The imagination easily takes over while standing at the edge of the Grand Canyon or staring into the vastness of the 1.3 million acres of the Uinta-Wasatch-Cache National Forest and pondering the secrets it contains.

Capturing that unique essence and wonder is a key objective of NEHMA executive director and chief curator Katie Lee-Koven.

“If we’re doing a good job at this museum, when you visit, you kind of forget where you are,” Lee-Koven says. “You could be in New York City or in L.A., in this museum with great exhibits that are taking you to a different place.”

She also notes NEHMA’s ongoing desire to search out the work of artists that have been “left behind” or are underappreciated. An example of this is Ruth Asawa, whose six-lobed hanging structure is suspended in the museum’s main foyer. The 21-foot-long sculpture, constructed from malleable brass wire, is Asawa’s largest and a centerpiece of NEHMA’s collection. However, her work has only recently become popular in the mainstream — well after her death in 2013.

Like Asawa, Bailey is an accomplished artist with nearly three dozen solo museum shows and his work in permanent collections in more than 60 major museums, including the Renwick Gallery and the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington D.C. He also received multiple awards and grants during his career, including the Fellow of the National Council on Education in Ceramic Arts in 1982, a National Endowment for the Arts grant in 1990, the “Golden Bear Artist of the Year” in 2009.

A pioneer of the Funk Art and Nut Art movements, Bailey’s work caught the eye of George Wanlass, the great-nephew of museum founder Nora Eccles Harrison and driving force behind USU’s new Wanlass Center for Art Education and Research.

“George facilitated this acquisition of the work with Clayton Bailey,” Lee-Koven explains. “He’s been collecting art and helping NEHMA build our collection since the museum opened in 1982, and he is still helping us today — over 40 years later. He likes things that are surprising and can cast a new light on what we think American art is today.”

When the “Lure and Lore of the West” opens, Bailey’s Bigfoot bones will be the centerpiece of the exhibit’s “Cave of Western Monsters.” However, despite the skeleton’s rather large size, it’s only a small portion of what’s in store. From the mythologization of the American cowboy to the Transcontinental Railroad and the admonition to “Go West,” there will be something for everyone.

“I hope that everyone will come and experience the escape into fantasy that we’re hoping to provide,” Stewart says. “I really want this to be something that is nostalgic for people. That when they come, they think about the camping trips they took with their families, arguing with their siblings in the backseat of the car as they go to Zion. Those are the ideas that we want to be evoking — the beauty and the wonder that is Utah.”