Celebrated Toledo artist Robert Garcia pays homage to the drive-in theaters of the 1950s in National Waterfall Drive-In Theater. The Lone Ranger and Tonto, icons of 1950s Hollywood Westerns, gallop out of the movie screen and appear to hover just above a couple watching from a car parked below.

In the twentieth century, the mythic West lived on in the minds of the public through the stories told in novels and on radio, television, and film. Tonto, portrayed on TV by Mohawk Canadian actor Jay Silverheels, spoke broken English, wore fringed buckskin, and rode a pinto pony. He became a popular image of what Native Americans were to the public, clouding their ability to recognize Indigenous people as living contemporary lives alongside them.

Roberto Garcia (born 1947), National Waterfall Drive-In Theater. Soft-paste porcelain with polychrome enamel paint, 1983. 19 x 19 x 21 in. (48.3 x 48.3 x 53.3 cm). Gift of Georgia Blair in memory of Posy and Bob Huebner, 2016.68. On view in Expanding Horizons: The Evolving Character of a Nation.