Museum Features "Dee" Flagg collection Scottsdale, AZ 09/07 - Museum with salvaged Dee Flagg art collection set to open . . . A homebuilder with a devotion to the old West and an auctioneer who bought a million-dollar art collection for $75 have thrown their lot together as part of a new Bison Museum opening next month in Scottsdale. Gary Martinson, owner of Bison Homes, combined his collection of Western and buffalo art with the lifetime works of Scottsdale's first family of art - the Flaggs. With the aid of Sid Kramer an x Disney theme designer together laid out a flowing museum. Blending all the different elements together with a seperate wing devoted to the Flagg family art. The homebuilder bought the Flagg paintings and woodcarvings from Neil King, who salvaged the works when he bought them for $75 at a storage center foreclosure sale in 2003. The art was valued as high as $3.8 million. Martinson, who built the Bison Ranch community near Heber, said he is unaware of the worth of his Bison Museum collection. "It's not about it being a huge asset," Martinson said. "I just want to have people come to see it and to perpetuate the Western image and lifestyle." The 10,000-square-foot Bison Museum shares space with Bison Homes. King, a auctioneer who now works as a museum historian, searched hard to find someone locally with an interest in keeping the Flagg collection intact. Arizona historian Marshall Trimble and others had feared the worst for the Flaggs' woodcarvings, paintings, brushes and carving tools. "Our cause was to keep it together," Trimble said. "Broken up it would get lost on eBay and in people's personal collections." Flagg family in Scottsdale The Flaggs moved to Scottsdale in the early 1950's and created their art there for more than three decades. Dee Flagg, an acclaimed woodcarver, was the best known of the Flaggs, but Monte Flagg was popular as well. The father, James Montgomery Flagg, and daughters Irene, Rita and Claudine, contributed to the family's prolific output. Museum historian King credits Monte Flagg with creating the Scottsdale cowboy, the iconic sign in Old Town Scottsdale that has endured for a half century along Scottsdale Road. A replica of Flagg's Scottsdale cowboy will greet museum visitors. The Flagg art dovetails with builder Martinson's buffalo collection, which he has built over 30 years. In 2000, Martinson bought the collection of Gemmie Baker, who operated the Buffalo Museum of America in Scottsdale for eight years, starting in 1992. Martinson bought the Flagg art just as he was preparing to build the Bison Museum. He had displayed his collection at the Bison Ranch but decided he needed more space to better show the wide range of items. Memories of the Old West Paintings, dishes, silverware, badges, toys and hundreds of items stamped with the iconic American bison image fill the display cases and walls of Martinson's museum. And there are bronze bison sculptures, Buffalo Bill Cody memorabilia and a prop of a dying buffalo used in the movie Dances With Wolves. The museum also includes seven full-size carvings by Dee Flagg of Daniel Boone, Billy the Kid, Jesse James, Calamity Jane, Wild Bill Hickcok, Buffalo Bill and Wyatt Earp. It also has a life-size wooden Indian that Dee Flagg kept with him while driving a 1914 American La France fire truck around Scottsdale and the West selling his woodcarvings. Attorneys representing Irene Flagg, the only surviving Flagg sibling, challenged King's acquisition of the Flagg collection in court in 2003. A settlement was reached earlier this year but the terms were sealed in Maricopa County Superior Court. King said that Irene Flagg got her share of the proceeds when he sold the collection to Martinson. "I didn't make a ton of money out of this, believe me," he said, adding that it has been gratifying to finally see the Flaggs' art properly displayed in Scottsdale. "There is a sense of peace for me," he added. The Bison Museum is opened Oct. 13. 2007, it was unfortunate that it closed 2 years later, as the housing market collapsed.
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