On April 29, 2006, the Friends of the Princeton University Library hosted a day-long academic conference entitled “Framing the Frontier: A Day of Lectures in Honor of Alfred L. Bush.” The conference focus was early photography of the American West and contemporary issues surrounding its collection, display, and ownership.
In the first panel, "Picturing the West," the speakers explored the place of photography in early expeditions to the West, in the rise of the western cityscape, and in Native American consciousness. The speakers in second panel, "Western Americana Photographs in the Archive," focused on collecting western photographs, their display in exhibitions, and the ethics and politics of photographic images in the age of intellectual property. Speakers at the conference, included: Ron Tyler, (University of Texas, Austin), Jennifer A. Watts, (Huntington Library), Mick Gidley (University of Leeds), George Miles (Yale University Library), Anton Treuer (Bemidji State University), and Michael F. Brown (Williams College).
The conference was held in honor of Alfred L. Bush, who retired as Curator of Western Americana in December 2002. Bush voraciously collected photographs of the American West during his 45-year tenure at Princeton, ultimately collecting some five thousand photographs. The conference was followed by a lecture by Martha A. Sandweiss (Amherst College) and the opening of an exhibition curated by Heather A. Shannon, “Framing the Frontier: Photographers & the American West, 1850-1920” at Firestone Library’s Main Gallery.
In 2015, the online exhibition was migrated to the Omeka platform for archival purposes.