14K attend annual buffalo roundup

CUSTER STATE PARK, S.D. » The images are much like what moviegoers saw during the buffalo hunt when "Dances With Wolves" hit the big screen nearly 25 years ago: hundreds of massive animals shaking the prairie as they kick up dust and stream down the hills.

During the annual Custer State Park Buffalo Roundup in South Dakota’s Black Hills on Friday, horseback riders — many of them real-life cowboys — were joined by all-terrain vehicles and pickup trucks to gather about 1,200 bison into corrals, joining roughly 100 head brought in earlier. They’re branded and vaccinated, and then the herd is culled to about 900 that will be re-released onto the park. The rest are sold at auction.

The annual event started 49 years ago as a way to manage the herd and ensure there’s enough grass for all the animals.

"We’d do it if nobody showed up, but we share it with America," said Craig Pugsley, visitor services coordinator for the park. The crowd has grown from a few hundred spectators in the early years to about 14,000 people from around the world. Park managers expect much bigger crowds next year for the 50th roundup.

Benton mural to go on view at Met

NEW YORK » A 10-panel mural by realist painter Thomas Hart Benton depicting American life before the Depression is going on view at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art.

"America Today" was commissioned in 1930 for the New School for Social Research in Manhattan.

The panoramic artwork features imagery of industrial American life throughout the 1920s. There are figures of farmers, coal miners, steelworkers and tycoons of modern industry and transportation. It established Benton as a leading American muralist.

The exhibition re-creates the school’s original boardroom, where the work once hung. Benton’s studies for the mural are part of the exhibition.

It opens Tuesday and runs through April 19.