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It is hard to believe that it was almost seven years ago that I began my internship in the Education Department at the Amon Carter Museum. I was both excited and honored to be behind the scenes at a museum whose collection and programs I had long admired. A few months later, I felt like I won the lottery when I was actually offered a full-time, paid position in the deparment. Since that time, I have had the privilege of sharing the Carter’s collection with a wide variety of audiences— tours for tots, observation programs for osteopaths, lectures for learners, fun-activities for families, and you—and have loved (almost) every minute of it.

So, as you can imagine, it is with great sadness that I say today is my last day. I am leaving the museum to spend more time with my growing family—the most precious artwork I have ever seen.

Thank you for letting me share some of my experiences with you.

Art and artists have played important roles in shaping awareness of the environment and the landscape in the United States. In the nineteenth-century, landscape paintings by Hudson River School artists illustrated and inspired our country’s desire to cherish, revel in, and use the environment. While in the twentieth century, art and the environmental movement became linked in defining wilderness and the politics of preserving it.

If you are interested in learning more about the many connections between artists and the environment, join us at 11 a.m. this Saturday for the special lecture, Land and Liberty: Environmentalism in American Art. During this free program, Dr. Todd Kerstetter, associate professor of history at Texas Christian University, will use works in the Carter’s permanent collection of painting and photographs to illustrate the development of environmental thought from the 1830s through the twentieth-century environmental movement.

Two colleagues just popped by my office to tell me to run upstairs and see the new painting entitled Home by the Lake, 1852 by Frederic Church. The painting is on loan from a private collection, and just happened to appear in the museum’s blue galleries today!

In its current location, the painting is part of a trio of artworks (another by Church and one by Church’s teacher Thomas Cole) that show settlers settling in the great American wilderness— cozy log cabin on lakeside property with mountain views included.

The label copy informs us that a nineteenth-century critic referred to this painting as “a charming little poem in itself.” Will you twenty-first century critics agree? Stop by the museum sometime soon and take a look for yourself.

Thanks to the Dallas Morning News for including the Carter’s third annual Celebrate Earth Day! Family Funday in their list of upcoming Earth Day events. We hope to see you there!

Museum admission fees have been something of a hot topic on Tyler Green’s blog today (here, here, and here). So it seems like a good time to remind everyone out there that the Carter is a free and fabulous place to be.

Georgia O’Keeffe (1887–1986)
Ranchos Church, New Mexico, 1930–31
Oil on canvas
Amon Carter Museum, Fort Worth, Texas
1971.16

The above painting is currently on view in the Carter’s permanent collection.

Liliane De Cock (b. 1939)
Rear of Church, Ranchos de Taos, New Mexico, 1972
Gelatin silver print
Amon Carter Museum, Fort Worth, Texas
P1974.23.8
(© 1972 Liliane De Cock)

This photograph is on view until June 28 in the new exhibition High Modernism: Alfred Stieglitz and His Legacy.

A quick search through the Carter’s collection database produced an impressive list of other artist’s depictions of Ranchos de Taos Church in Taos, New Mexico. This discovery led me to ask myself what is it about this particular place that has inspired so many artists to try and capture it on canvas, paper, or film? What other man-made wonders in America have inspired such artistic reverence?

One of the things I love most about my job is getting to see students of all ages connect to works of art in ways that I never imagined.

Take a moment to read a few of the wonderful poems that were created by first and second-grade students from Palo Pinto Elementary School during their recent visit to the museum.

Frederic S. Remington (1861–1909)
A Dash for the Timber, 1889
Oil on canvas
Amon Carter Museum, Fort Worth, Texas
1961.381

Motion Poems based on Dash

Hear the wind, hear the cries
Thunder stomping! Hear the guns
Stop and watch this scene
Think of being there
What would it feel like?

Run Run very fast!
Run away to the woods and away from the Indians.
Jump! Run! Gallop away.
I hear gun shots and screaming
Ya! Ya!
Save me!
Dust in my eyes! Help me!

An Acrostic Poem Inspired by Barbara Crane’s Photographs
Lightning
Icy white
Glue
High up
Tree branches

Then read about a public art project that was inspired by the Travis Elementary School art students’ visit to the Carter last fall.

After a three-month hiatus, the Carter’s New Parents Tour returned last Friday. Link here to see what Fort Worth Star-Telegram reporter Mercedes Mayer had to say about her experience, and then make plans to attend the next tour on March 27.

John Quincy Adams Ward (1830–1910)
The Freedman, 1863
Bronze
2000.15

Join us in celebrating the bicentennial of Abraham Lincoln’s birthday by attending this evening’s special Gallery Talk Abraham Lincoln and the Emancipation Proclamation. During the discussion, Dr. Steven Woodworth, professor of history, Texas Christian University, and Rebecca Lawton, curator of paintings and sculpture, Amon Carter Museum, will talk about the Emancipation Proclamation and how it relates to the museum’s landmark sculpture The Freedman (1863) by John Quincy Adams Ward.

This program was made possible in part with a grant from Humanities Texas, the state affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Love is in the air everywhere this weekend, and so it seems like a good time to share the results of a punny game that intern Kristina Hilliard and I played last summer. The objective was to come up with lines that an art-fan could use on works in the Carter’s collection. I wish I had written our ideas down at the time, because this is all I can remember now. Feel free to share you ideas too.

They really broke the mold when they made you.

Hang around here often?

What’s your sign?

Do you believe in love at first sight or should I walk by again?

You look beautiful today, just like every other day.

You are like a dictionary, because you add meaning to my life.

Want to impress a classy lady? Take her to the gun show. Courtesy of Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy