JM Cooper: Adel Sheep Shearing

J.M. Cooper: Adel Sheep Shearing

Aresty Gallery at the Missoula Art Museum

October 3, 2025-February 21, 2026

This series of photographs focuses on the annual sheep shearing at the Sieben Live Stock Company in Adel near Cascade, Montana. Cooper photographed the event over three separate years. The ranch was founded in 1868 by Henry Sieben, subject of a new book to be published in tandem with the exhibition by Farcountry Press and the Foundation for Montana History.

Cooper began photographing in the 1970s, and was a student of Lee Nye, the infamous black & white photographer from Missoula, MT. “When Lee walked into the classroom wearing aviator sunglasses, I knew I was going to be a photographer,” he says.

Cooper recently retired as archival photographer for the Montana Historical Society. He has documented spring shearing and branding, and Montana architecture including the Archie Bray Foundation, Deer Lodge Prison, and Helena’s Last Chance Gulch. His photos are published in Dark Spaces: Montana’s Historic Penitentiary at Deer Lodge in collaboration with Ellen Baulmer.