The Overland Westerners Collection was acquired from the personal archives of Bill Reese, an award-winning western artist. This acquisition was made possible through a field program formalized by the A. Keith Brodkin Contemporary Western Artists Project.

This project is critical to achieving the Donald C. & Elizabeth M. Dickinson Research Center's goal to preserve, expand, enhance and make available its collections and, more specifically, to provide future artists, art historians, educators, and researchers with materials that document contemporary western art...a major collecting strength of this Museum. These materials, which are often overlooked and lost to posterity, include the personal papers, studio ephemera, photographs, and interviews of contemporary western artists. Effectively, this project preserves artists careers for posterity.