‘Brokeback Mountain’ shirts worn by Ledger, Gyllenhaal head to museum Iconic Shirts From Brokeback Mountain
on Display in Autry’s Imagination GalleryTwo 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 August 5, 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 August 5, 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.
http://www.autrynationalcenter.org/pdfs/Brokeback_Mountain.pdf
