California firm designs high-tech cowgirl hall of fame

Journal Record, The (Oklahoma City), Jun 25, 1997 by Dave McNary Los Angeles Daily News

LOS ANGELES -- A small company in L.A.'s San Fernando Valley has lassoed a major agreement to re-create a lesser-known aspect of the Old West -- the American cowgirl.

BRC Imagination Arts of Burbank, 11 miles northwest of downtown Los Angeles, will design and build a new National Cowgirl Museum & Hall of Fame in Fort Worth, due to open in the spring of 1999.

"I was initially drawn to bidding on the project by Annie Oakley and by the fun and the color of the 19th century West," said Robert Rogers, founder and chairman of BRC. "What surprised me was the depth of seriousness of these incredible women." The centerpiece of the 27,000-square-foot project will be a sculpture of Mae Frances Hafley atop a horse as they jump into a small wooden tank -- a re-enactment of her 50-foot "Leap of Death." The facility will also include a 150-seat American Cowgirl Theater with a film detailing the lives of Hall of Fame members; a "Lives and Legends Galleries" area featuring female ranchers, trailblazers, entertainers, writers and artists; the Cowgirl Store; a hands-on Kids Korral; and a research library and classrooms. BRC specializes in "immersive" attractions using movies, lasers and holograms to bring the flash of theme parks into museums and big doses of entertainment to theme parks. The privately held company recently announced it had completed the design for the facility with the goal of giving the public a journey into the hearts and minds of American cowgirls. "We're at the stage now where we're taking vague notions and turning them into real ideas," Rogers said. "We'll start design development in a week or two, turning the concepts into buildable drawings with air conditioning ducts." Construction should start by next spring. The new facility will be successor to the original museum in Hereford, Texas, which opened in 1975 and closed in May 1996 in order to restore and update its collections. It will also be sited in Fort Worth's downtown cultural district, which features half a dozen museums including the Will Rogers Memorial Center and the Amon Carter Museum of Western Art. Rogers anticipates that BRC, which has about 25 full-time employees, will use as many as 250 people -- some for as long as six months, some for as little as a day -- on the project. The 16-year-old company has worked on a wide variety of projects, including exhibits at the Kennedy and Johnson Space Centers, the Mystery Lodge at Knotts Berry Farm in Buena Park in Orange County and the Magic of Disney Animation attraction at MGM-Disney Studios in Florida. BRC strives to mix showmanship and storytelling, re-creating historical events such as the floor-shaking lift-off of a Saturn VI rocket at Kennedy Space Center and the landing of Apollo 11 on the moon. Rogers said the Cowgirl project represents new territory for BRC, noting, "We've never done anything with horses and cowboy hats, but this is right at the heart of what we do -- bringing world-class entertainment and content together." The executive said he was particularly impressed by the fact that cowgirls often performed with injuries like broken arms and were able to make significant inroads into what had been an exclusively male domain. "You wouldn't think that women wearing jeans would be a problem in rodeo but doing that was scandalous at the time," Rogers said. "They were pioneers of entering the work place and were able to do it by bringing a sense of grounded self-confidence. "I think what we're going after is creating something that is not so much about the 19th century as the 21st." As with other BRC projects, this one began not with any kind of drawings but a series of discussions with the museum's operators about the "look and feel" of the new facility last fall. Typically, projects take about three to five years from initial conception to completion. Other current BRC projects include "The Assembly Experience" and "Driving Technologies Laboratory" at the General Motors' Test Track pavilion at Epcot Center, due to open later this year; the Loch Lomond Visitor Attraction in Scotland; a Warner Bros.' theme park at an undisclosed overseas site; and Space Park Bremen, a German theme park about space exploration due to open in 1999.