John Tongate is a retired librarian who used to work at the University of Texas. Change the “K” in books to a “T” and you get boots. And that’s what Tongate has done in his spare time: built a gorgeous collection of artisanal cowboy boots, an art of the American West. This exhibition in Austin is drawn from the John Tongate Cowboy Boot Collection—72 pairs commissioned over 40-plus years. The colors and leather work are stunning, and the boots in the show are accompanied by documents that follow their designs from sketching to stitching. “Now that the boots are preserved in the Briscoe Center,” says Tongate, “there is access to examples from the last quarter of the 20th into the early 21st century, a time capsule.” Texas may be allied with oil, but it’s still the cattle giant of the nation, which means cowboys. —Laura Jacobs