Carter’s Head of Education Named Outstanding Museum Art Educator of Texas

admin — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 16:10:04 +0000

Release date:

November 11, 2009

FORT WORTH, Texas—The Texas Art Education Association (TAEA) recently named Stacy Fuller, Amon Carter Museum head of education, as its 2009 Outstanding Museum Division Art Educator. The award will be presented Friday, November 13, at TAEA’s annual conference in Dallas.

The Texas Art Education Association’s mission is to raise the standards of art education throughout the state, to promote art as an integral part of the curriculum and to represent the art educators of Texas.

Fuller joined the Amon Carter Museum in 2004. As head of education, she oversees the museum’s extensive and varied education programs, which include school tours, public programs, educator training and workshops, teaching resource center initiatives and distance learning broadcasts. In addition, she has developed and successfully implemented the museum’s highly regarded Sharing the Past Through Art and Connect to Art accessible programs. This year, she was selected as vice president of the Museum Education Roundtable, a national organization dedicated to furthering museum education.

Fuller has led presentations at annual conferences of the Texas Association of Museums, National Art Education Association, Texas Art Education Association, American Association of Museums, and Leadership Exchange in Arts and Disability, and has lectured at Humanities Texas summer teaching institutes.

“I am incredibly honored to receive this award,” says Fuller. “I feel passionately about sharing the Carter and our education programs and love extending our collection to as many audiences as possible.

“Receiving this award would not be possible without support from the entire museum and board of trustees and the dedicated education team that daily brings art to life for so many visitors.”

Masterpieces from the Met on View at the Carter

admin — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 20:14:34 +0000

Release date:

November 3, 2009

For a limited time, visitors to the Amon Carter Museum can see two American masterpieces from the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, The Artist’s Wife and His Setter Dog (1884–89) by Thomas Eakins and Lydia Crocheting in the Garden at Marly (1880) by Mary Cassatt.

“Both are intimate portraits of the artists’ loved ones, although the artists approached their subjects quite differently,” says Rebecca Lawton, curator of paintings and sculpture at the Amon Carter Museum. “Eakins depicts his wife and setter Harry with an uncompromising realism, while Cassatt portrays her ailing sister Lydia with the delicacy and directness of the Impressionists’ brushstroke.”

While these two paintings are in Fort Worth, the Carter has in return loaned two of its own masterpieces to the Met, Swimming (1895) by Thomas Eakins and Idle Hours (ca. 1894) by William Merritt Chase. Both paintings are in the Met’s exhibition American Stories: Paintings of Everyday Life, 1765–1915.

The paintings are on view at the Amon Carter Museum through January 25, 2010.

And, the Amon Carter Museum is hosting a free gallery talk about these two loans on November 12 at 6 p.m. at the museum.

Amon Carter Museum Receives Grants from Texas Commission on the Arts

admin — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 16:56:26 +0000

Release date:

October 30, 2009

FORT WORTH, Texas—The Amon Carter Museum announces that it has been awarded two grants from the Texas Commission on the Arts (TCA). The museum will receive a two-year $48,000 Arts Create grant and a $2,500 Arts Respond Project-Education grant.

“We are both honored and grateful for receiving these generous grants from the Texas Commission on the Arts,” says Amon Carter Museum Director Ron Tyler. “Admission to the Carter is free, and though we receive support from the Amon G. Carter Foundation, we must still raise between $1.5 and $2 million a year to cover the costs of our education programs, special exhibitions, free-admission policy and other initiatives. Both of these grants will help us achieve that fundraising goal.”

The Arts Create and Arts Repond grants are two new categories for TCA, which recently restructured its grant programs. The Carter’s Arts Create award is the second-highest given in the state. These funds go toward the museum’s operating budget, supporting staff salaries and other general expenses. TCA established Arts Create to advance the creative economy of Texas by investing in arts organizations.

Arts Respond was established to support projects that use art to promote innovations in K-12 education and to provide project assistance grants on a short-term basis. The Carter’s award will be applied to the museum’s award-winning Distance Learning program, which reached more than 14,000 students from around the country during the 2008–2009 school year through live interactive videoconferences.

For more information about the Carter’s programs, please visit cartermuseum.org.

New Amon Carter Museum Galleries, Web Site Spotlight Remington and Russell

admin — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 20:31:04 +0000

Release date:

October 15, 2009

FORT WORTH, Texas—An interpretative gallery space dedicated to the works of Frederic Remington and Charles M. Russell recently opened at the Amon Carter Museum. Located on the mezzanine level of the museum, the nearly 2,000-square-foot network of galleries serves to educate visitors about the works of American artists Remington and Russell. Admission to the gallery is free.

“When the museum expanded in 2001, we gained additional space to exhibit our renowned collection,” says Rick Stewart, senior curator of western paintings and sculpture. “What we found was that our visitors wanted to know even more about Remington and Russell and their techniques. We hope these galleries better acquaint the public with the life and works of these two great American artists.”

The galleries feature the self-taught artists’ oil paintings, watercolors and drawings. Nearly 100 artworks are on view, and the museum plans to periodically rotate some of the works. Several interactive features comprise the galleries, including pull-out drawers with large works on paper and a computer workstation. Museum visitors may also watch a short animation that depicts the lost-wax bronze casting process utilized by Remington and Russell. Additional works by Remington can be viewed in the second-level paintings and sculpture galleries.

In addition to the interpretative galleries, the museum has launched www.cartermuseum.org/remington-and-russell, the definitive online resource for any scholar or layperson interested in Remington, Russell and their art. Every work by the two artists in the museum’s collection (about 400 objects) is viewable online. Exhaustive timelines are provided for each artist as well, complete with hundreds of period photographs and noteworthy events and dates in their lives. The site also includes: biographies of the two artists; comprehensive bibliographies; videos of the lost-wax process of making sculpture and of curator Rick Stewart discussing several of the artists’ works; and extensive teaching resources, making the site a destination for educators everywhere.

Teachers of any grade level can integrate the online lesson plans into their classroom. The materials, designed in cooperation with administrators and teachers, meet Texas and national teaching standards in a variety of disciplines including U.S. history, language arts and visual arts. In addition to lesson plans, the site provides educators access to bibliographies, Web links and materials from the Carter’s Teaching Resource Center.

“By making the teaching resources available through the Web site, teachers will have free access to the many interdisciplinary ways of sharing Remington and Russell with their students,” says Head of Education Stacy Fuller. “Today’s children will be tomorrow’s adults, and we want them to understand the lasting legacy of our American heritage.”

The Remington and Russell interpretative galleries, Web site and education programs were made possible by a generous grant from the Jane and John Justin Foundation.

About Frederic Remington (1861–1909)

Frederic Remington, one of the most important and influential artists to portray the American West, was largely self-taught. He was born on October 4, 1861, in Canton, New York. After stints in two military schools, Remington enrolled in the Yale School of Fine Arts in 1878. Following the death of his father, he dropped out of Yale after only three semesters and moved back in with his family. In 1881 he took his first trip west to the Montana Territory, where he made some sketches. His first illustration was published in Harper’s Weekly the following year.

In 1883 Remington moved to Kansas, where he attempted careers as a sheep rancher and saloon owner while pursuing his interest in art. Newly married and encouraged by the sale of some of his works, he relocated to New York City where, over the next few years, his reputation as an artist and illustrator of the American West was firmly established. Remington traveled extensively, often at the behest of Harper’s Weekly, making sketches and gathering information in a broad swath of the West that included Canada and northern Mexico. He became the most prolific and certainly the most influential artist-correspondent of the period. In 1895 he created his first bronze sculpture, which proved very popular. By 1900 he was not only successful as an illustrator but was enjoying a growing reputation as a serious artist whose works were winning critical praise. His untimely death from a ruptured appendix on Christmas Day, 1909, cut short his career.

About Charles M. Russell (1864–1926)

Charles Marion Russell was born on March 19, 1864, in St. Louis, Missouri, the son of a successful manufacturer and businessman. In 1880, after briefly attending military school in New Jersey, Russell talked his parents into letting him travel to the Montana Territory to work on a ranch. The following year he began a two-year apprenticeship with a professional hunter and trapper; after this he obtained employment as a night herder, working for various ranches in the growing Montana open-range cattle industry. Throughout this period, Russell evolved as a self-taught artist. He sketched, modeled and painted, achieving a regional reputation as “The Cowboy Artist” and selling examples of his work. He exhibited his first oil painting in St. Louis in 1886, and his first published illustration followed in the pages of Harper’s Weekly two years later.

In 1893 Russell left range work to pursue art full time, and in 1896 he married Nancy Cooper (1878–1940), who dedicated her life to managing her husband’s art. Russell made his first visit to New York City in 1903, the same year his log-cabin studio was erected in Great Falls. Over the next twenty years, he executed a number of illustrations on commission and published a number of his stories. Since boyhood, he had modeled sculptures in painted wax and plaster; in 1904 while on a trip to New York, he created his first work in bronze. Solo exhibitions of his work in a number of cities, beginning in 1911, secured his reputation as a major artist of the American West. In the 1920s his regular visits to California had a considerable influence on the rapidly growing film industry. Russell died of heart failure in Great Falls on October 24, 1926.

Amon Carter Museum Announces New Public Programs Manager

admin — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 19:57:31 +0000

Release date:

October 7, 2009

FORT WORTH, Texas (October 7, 2009)—The Amon Carter Museum is pleased to announce that Brady Nichols Sloane has joined its staff in the newly created position of Public Programs Manager.
Sloane is responsible for developing and implementing a broad range of programs and resources designed to assist visitors of all ages and abilities, including adults, children and families, in experiencing and understanding the Carter’s collections and special exhibitions.

“The Carter’s new position of Public Programs Manager will allow us to continue popular existing programs and further expand initiatives that connect a variety of audiences to our outstanding collection of American art,” says Stacy Fuller, head of education. “I am eager to see the Carter’s public programs grow under Brady’s leadership and creativity and look forward to our exciting lineup of upcoming programs.”

Previous to the Carter, Sloane was curator of exhibits at the Center for Contemporary Arts in Abilene, Texas. While there, she conceptualized and implemented more than 25 in-house rotating exhibitions a year including six national and international photography exhibits. Sloane developed various programs to coincide with special exhibitions, including a partnership with the Alliance for Women and Children (formerly the YMCA). Sloane served as coordinator for Abilene’s ArtWalk (a downtown monthly celebration of the arts) for more than a year, and taught art outreach programs and summer art camps. She has also worked as an independent curator for several art organizations including the National Center for Children’s Illustrated Literature and the 2009 Texas Association of Schools of Art annual competition. Sloane will receive her master’s degree in museum studies from the University of Oklahoma in December 2009. She has a bachelor of fine arts degree from McMurry University in Abilene.

“I am thrilled to join the Amon Carter Museum as Public Programs Manager,” Sloane says. “I look forward to continuing the success of current programming, in addition to implementing new programs and serving the needs of the Fort Worth community.”

Landmark Sheeler Painting Acquired by Amon Carter Museum

admin — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 19:55:12 +0000

Release date:

October 7, 2009

FORT WORTH, Texas—The Amon Carter Museum announces that it has acquired a major American painting by the artist Charles Sheeler: Conversation—Sky and Earth, painted in 1940.

“This superb example of Sheeler’s work is a vital addition to our holdings of this important and versatile artist, who until now has been represented in our collection by one drawing, five prints, and six photographs,” says Dr. Ron Tyler, director.

Sheeler, long recognized as a founder of American modernism, was inspired and influenced by the country’s changing industrialism in the first half of the 20th century, nowhere more notably than in the Carter’s new acquisition. With its crisp rendering and cropping and its absence of any allusion to movement, the painting juxtaposes transmission towers and wires against the backdrop of the Hoover Dam, which had been completed only four years before and was both the world’s largest hydroelectric power plant and tallest concrete structure. A crystalline sky looms over two-thirds of the painting, which is rendered with extraordinarily controlled brushwork.

“The acquisition of this famous landmark painting strengthens the museum’s collection in important ways,” says Rebecca Lawton, curator of paintings and sculpture. “It is beautifully executed, daring in its conception, and highly provocative in its evocation of a photographic source.”

It was prior to completing Conversation—Sky and Earth that the artist made a professional shift from photography to painting. His highly successful works, including a commissioned series of photographs of Ford Motor Company’s River Rouge plant (1927), served as the foundation for a series of later paintings.

In 1938, Fortune magazine commissioned Sheeler to produce a pictorial essay that celebrated America’s industrial power. To prepare for the series, Sheeler photographed power stations across the nation and chose subjects to reflect the power theme—a water wheel (Primitive Power, 1939), a steam turbine (Steam Turbine, 1939), the railroad (Rolling Power, 1939), a hydroelectric turbine (Suspended Power, 1939), an airplane (Yankee Clipper, 1939) and a dam (Conversation—Sky and Earth). These paintings, collectively known as “Power,” were reproduced in color in a portfolio supplement to the December 1940 issue of Fortune. They now reside in the permanent collections of the Dallas Museum of Art (Suspended Power); Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Providence (Yankee Clipper); The Butler Institute of American Art, Youngstown, Ohio (Steam Turbine); Curtis Galleries, Minneapolis (Primitive Power); and Smith College Museum of Art, Northhampton, Mass. (Rolling Power).

According to Lawton, the Carter’s Sheeler epitomizes the aesthetics of Precisionism, a style that until now had been under-represented in the museum’s paintings collection. Sheeler effectively invented this crisp, clean and hard-edged style. Lawton notes that Conversation—Sky and Earth will resonate well with the museum’s Chimney and Water Tower, 1931, by Charles Demuth. Both are on view in the upstairs paintings and sculpture galleries.

About Charles Sheeler

Born in Philadelphia on July 16, 1883, Charles Sheeler studied at the School of Industrial Art and the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, where he was a pupil of painter William Merritt Chase. Sheeler became friends with a fellow student, Morton Schamberg, and toured Europe with Schamberg in the early 1900s. In Paris, Sheeler was introduced to the then-new Cubist style of Georges Braque and Pablo Picasso, and it would strongly influence his work.

Sheeler established a studio in Philadelphia, where he supported himself as a commercial photographer. Though he felt that his paintings were more aesthetically important, Sheeler’s photography was highly regarded. The clean lines of light and shadow in his photos would carry over into his paintings, which are known for their precise, geometric quality.

Sheeler was part of the early 20th-century New York avant-garde art world that included Demuth, Louis Lozowick and Joseph Stella. Unlike many of his contemporaries, he focused on American subjects and not European subjects. Sheeler’s favorite subjects tended to be urban or industrial structures, rural architecture or aspects of nature. His paintings and photographs are not emotional or sentimental, and his paintings rarely involved people.

He died in Dobbs Ferry, N.Y., in 1965.

Amon Carter Museum Schedule of Upcoming Photography Exhibitions

admin — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 14:24:14 +0000

Release date:

August 19, 2009

Circle of Friends: Portraits of Artists
Through November 29, 2009

For much of the history of figurative art, artists have made self-portraits and portraits of their patrons, but with the advent of modernism they began making portraits of one another with increasing regularity. Although the practice of artist portraiture was widespread in painting, printmaking, sculpture and photography through much of the 20th century, photographers were especially perceptive of a need to document their circles of artist-peers and friends.

As part of the process, photographers created works that embody their artistic and personal ambitions, from the glamorous femme fatale of Hollywood to the purposeful self-consciousness of the Stieglitz Circle painters, each of whom faced the camera in turn. Circle of Friends, drawn from the Amon Carter Museum’s collection of photographs, examines these historical moments via portraits of their key participants.

Masterworks of American Photography: Moments in Time
Through January 3, 2010

Journey through photography’s history in an exhibition of works from the medium’s early years to the present day. Taken together, these images from the Carter’s permanent collection reflect the diversity and richness of an American visual tradition and explore photography’s unique relationship to time.

The exhibition includes a number of recent acquisitions that relate to the passing of time in works that range from enduring still lifes to fleeting moments captured by the camera. This display of Masterworks of American Photography is supported by Canon U.S.A. and Fort Worth Camera.

Edward S. Curtis: The North American Indian
December 12, 2009–May 16, 2010

In 1900, Edward S. Curtis undertook the momentous task of documenting American Indian cultures across the United States. Over the next 30 years, he took over 40,000 photographs and collected information about more than 80 tribes, ranging from the Inuit people of the far north to the Hopi people of the Southwest. He assembled this material into 20 lavishly illustrated text volumes, each accompanied by a folio of approximately 38 exquisitely printed, hand-pulled photogravures. Today, The North American Indian is widely heralded as a masterpiece of unparalleled scope and beauty, revered by many as a key artistic and historical resource. The Amon Carter Museum will display a selection of works from this compelling new acquisition.

National Organizations Recognize Amon Carter Museum’s Distance Learning Program

elizabeth — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 18:09:24 +0000

Release date:

August 12, 2009

FORT WORTH, Texas (August 12, 2009)—The Amon Carter Museum’s distance learning program recently received national recognition from the Center for Interactive Learning and Collaboration (CILC) and the Berrien Regional Education Services Agency (RESA).

The CILC offers access to educational videoconferences to school classrooms across the nation. The Carter is one of approximately 150 CILC videoconference providers and received an honorable mention in the CILC’s annual Pinnacle Awards, which recognize outstanding videoconference content. The awards, which honored 39 organizations, are based on teacher feedback.

The Carter also participates in the Berrien RESA’s national database of more than 200 museums and zoos that offer educational videoconferences. In the annual Teachers’ Choice Awards, the museum received an honorable mention for its distance learning content. Winners were selected from teacher evaluations, and 48 national organizations received awards.

“We are honored to be recognized by both organizations for our distance learning program,” says Stacy Fuller, head of education. “These awards validate our commitment to allowing everyone to connect to American art.”

The museum’s distance learning program brings works from the collection into classrooms across the country. The live, interactive broadcasts, which align with the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS) and national standards, are led by Nancy Strickland, distance learning and docent program manager.

“Through videoconferencing, we provide the opportunity for students and educators across the country to see the Amon Carter Museum and engage in discussions with our staff—all from their classrooms,” says Strickland. “We explore art, history, culture, language arts and science, and reach about 16,000 individuals each year.”

For more information, visit www.cartermuseum.org/teaching/distance-learning.

Amon Carter Museum Announces Teacher and School Programs Manager

elizabeth — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 20:06:18 +0000

Release date:

July 24, 2009

FORT WORTH, Texas (July 24, 2009)—The Amon Carter Museum is pleased to announce that Sara Klein has joined its staff as the Teacher and School Programs Manager.

Klein is responsible for developing and implementing a broad range of programs designed to assist educators and students of all grade levels and disciplines to explore and understand the Carter’s collections and special exhibitions.

“Sara’s experience designing school tour programs and educator trainings will bring fresh insights to the Carter’s well-established, successful programs, elevating them to a higher level and allowing us to better serve the tens of thousands of teachers and students we reach each year,” says Stacy Fuller, the museum’s head of education.

Previous to the Carter, Klein was the education curator for tours and school programs at the Gilcrease Museum in Tulsa, Okla. While there, she helped to develop, implement and assess K-12 collection-based curriculum and programs. She also coordinated and scheduled all tours and school programs for the museum. Klein has a bachelor’s degree in art history and French from Augustana College (Rock Island, Ill.) and a master’s degree in art history from Florida State University (Tallahassee, Fla.).

“I am very excited about joining the staff at the Carter,” says Klein. “The museum is a wonderful institution, and I look forward to working closely with the gallery teachers and other education department members.”

Amon Carter Museum Receives Grants from King Foundation and Erwin E. Smith Foundation

elizabeth — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 18:14:48 +0000

Release date:

July 16, 2009

FORT WORTH, Texas—The Amon Carter Museum announces that it has recently received generous grants from The Carl B. and Florence E. King Foundation and the Erwin E. Smith Foundation.

With a $25,000 grant, the King Foundation is supporting the museum’s educator programs, which include interactive workshops that explore the museum’s collection and special exhibitions, training sessions tailored to individual districts, programs for pre-service teachers, and materials related to American art available for free loan to educators through the Teaching Resource Center.

“Supporting education is one of the foundation’s top priorities,” says Michelle D. Monse, president of the King Foundation. “We are proud to help fund the Amon Carter Museum’s extensive education programs, as they magnify the impact of the museum’s collection and enrich the community.”

“Last year, the Amon Carter Museum reached more than 4,500 educators,” says Stacy Fuller, head of education at the Carter. “The King Foundation grant will allow the museum to not only increase the number of local teachers served but also provide additional classroom resources.”

The Erwin E. Smith Foundation grant of $10,000 will allow the museum to broadcast Cowboy Close-Up, an interactive student videoconference. With the grant, the museum can provide a free broadcast for 40 schools, as well as provide participating schools with copies of the children’s book Cowboy with a Camera: Erwin E. Smith, Cowboy Photographer and other classroom resources.

The Erwin E. Smith Foundation, which works to foster an appreciation for Smith’s photography and advance the understanding of the history of the open-range cattle industry in the Southwest, has been a generous supporter of the Amon Carter Museum for several years. The Foundation previously funded the development of the Cowboy Close-Up videoconference, as well as online collection and teaching guides. Approximately 7,500 students have been reached through the Erwin Smith-focused videoconferences since 2008, according to Fuller.

For more information about the Carter’s education programs, please visit www.cartermuseum.org.

Amon Carter Museum presents Views and Visions: Prints of the American West, 1820–1970

elizabeth — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 18:11:02 +0000

Release date:

July 14, 2009

FORT WORTH, Texas—On September 19, 2009, the Amon Carter Museum presents Views and Visions: Prints of the American West, 1820–1970. The exhibition, on view through January 10, 2010, showcases approximately 120 prints and illustrated books from the museum’s permanent collection. Admission is free.

American artists saw and experienced the western frontier in different ways and with varied perspectives. This exhibition features prints from the past two centuries, representing a myriad views and visions of the American West.

“While the works will be arranged by subjects familiar to the viewer—nature, wildlife, native peoples and non-native settlement—they will reflect broader aspects,” says Rick Stewart, the Carter’s senior curator of western paintings and sculpture and curator of Views and Visions.

“One of the most interesting features in the exhibition will be the juxtaposition of particular works,” Stewart continues, “sometimes made more than a century apart, that will show curious similarities or intriguing differences in artistic vision.”

Included in the exhibition are the first eyewitness renderings of Yosemite Valley, the summit of the Sierra Nevada and the iconic Mountain of the Holy Cross. From these early landscapes and portraits of western denizens, the show progresses deep into the 20th century with works by Leonard Baskin, Thomas Hart Benton, John Steuart Curry and Grant Wood.

“As this exhibition will show, some American artists viewed the West in its mythic enlargement,” says Stewart, “while others attempted to infuse their mythic visions with a harsher reality. Yet even today, the appeal of the mythic vision of the American West remains widespread.”

Public Programs: Admission is free.

October 1, 6 p.m.
Printing the West
Gallery Talk

Dr. Rick Stewart, curator of western paintings and sculpture, and Dr. Ron Tyler, director, Amon Carter Museum

Picture the American West through the eyes of legendary artists like Leonard Baskin, Thomas Hart Benton, George Catlin, and Grant Wood, and investigate the themes that unite the works featured in the exhibition Views and Visions: Prints of the American West, 1820–1970.

November 8, 1–4 p.m.
Way Out West
Family Funday

Saddle up for fun with art! Artworks of the American West by artists such as Frederic Remington and Charles M. Russell will come to life for families of all ages through engaging activities and exciting stories.

Family Fundays are made possible by Alcon.

Amon Carter Museum Acquires Rare 20-volume Photography Book and Portfolio Set

elizabeth — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 18:08:18 +0000

Release date:

July 8, 2009

FORT WORTH, Texas—July 8, 2009—The Amon Carter Museum announces it has acquired a rare, complete set of Edward Sheriff Curtis’ The North American Indian (1907–1930), one of the most comprehensive records of American Indian life.

The set includes 20 volumes of illustrated books, each accompanied by a portfolio of approximately 36 large hand-pulled photogravures of American Indians that Curtis made between 1903 and 1928. In total, the books comprise more than 1,500 photogravures in addition to the 722 large photogravures in the portfolios. (A photogravure is an image produced from a photographic negative transferred to a metal plate and etched in. The printing plate is then used to make beautifully rich reproductions of the original image. Each print is hand-inked and pulled.)

“The North American Indian is one of the most important objects in the history of photography and a work of incredible beauty,” says John Rohrbach, senior curator of photographs. “Ownership of this complete original subscription set further solidifies the museum’s standing as a major resource for American art and culture.”

Convinced that American Indian cultures across the United States were on the verge of vanishing, in 1899 Curtis undertook the momentous task of collecting anthropological information on more than 80 American Indian tribes across the West. Through extensive texts, audio recordings and photographs, he documented the appearance, history and practices of tribes ranging from the Inuit people of the far north to the Hopi people of the Southwest. He took more than 40,000 photographs over the course of his decades-long research, and with financial assistance from J. Pierpont Morgan and the support of President Theodore Roosevelt, Curtis assembled these images and accompanying information into The North American Indian, a lavish presentation that became one of the most expensive undertakings in the history of book production. “The result is a masterwork of visual anthropology,” Rohrbach says.

“This acquisition complements the Amon Carter Museum’s holdings of great western artists, from Karl Bodmer to Frederic Remington,” Director Ron Tyler says. “Additionally, it provides a key bridge between our important mid-19th-century photographic portraits of American Indians and works by 2oth-century photographers, like Laura Gilpin’s extensive depictions of the Navajo.”

Although 500 sets of The North American Indian were planned, the project halted at the onset of the Great Depression. Curtis finished only 222 sets before he went bankrupt, and historians estimate that far fewer than this number exist today. The project was largely forgotten until the 1970s when a renewed interest in the history of photography encouraged scholars to take a new look at the work.

“Today, The North American Indian is widely heralded as a masterpiece production of unparalleled scope and splendor,” Tyler says. “We are privileged to own it and look forward to sharing it with our visitors.”

The museum will open an exhibition of The North American Indian in mid-December 2009.

Amon Carter Museum Exhibits Prints by Renowned Mexican Artist Rufino Tamayo

elizabeth — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 18:05:58 +0000

Release date:

June 23, 2009

FORT WORTH, Texas—Works by famed Mexican artist Rufino Tamayo (1899–1991) are currently on view at the Amon Carter Museum in a small exhibition from the museum’s permanent collection. The exhibition, titled Rufino Tamayo: Tamarind Lithography Workshop, features 16 prints created by the artist at the Tamarind Lithography Workshop in Los Angeles in 1964.

The exhibition runs through November 1, and admission is free.

“When Tamayo made these prints, he was already an established painter in Paris, New York, and Mexico,” says Jane Myers, senior curator of prints and drawings. “The images he created at Tamarind embody his humanitarian concerns. During the fellowship in Los Angeles, he discussed the threat of nuclear war, saying: ‘As soon as we heard of the development of the atom bomb, I became preoccupied with this awesome situation, and my work has more and more reflected the urgency of man’s relationship to the sky and the planets and to space.’”

The Tamarind Lithography Workshop opened in Los Angeles in 1960. At a time when lithography as an art form was in decline, the workshop sought to enhance the prestige of the medium by offering artists the opportunity to explore lithography in innovative collaborations with a pool of master printers. In 1970 the workshop moved to the University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, where it operates today as the Tamarind Institute. The Amon Carter Museum has extensive holdings of lithographs made at Tamarind during its first decade of operation.

Amon Carter Museum Receives Alcon, NEA Grants

elizabeth — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 18:02:55 +0000

Release date:

June 4, 2009

FORT WORTH, Texas (June 4, 2009)—The Amon Carter Museum announces that it has recently received grants totaling more than $150,000 from The Alcon Foundation — the philanthropic interest of Alcon Inc. (NYSE: ACL) — and the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA).

The Alcon Foundation is generously sponsoring the museum’s popular quarterly Family Fundays. These free events offer parents and children hands-on art projects, book readings and interactive tours, connecting them with artworks at the Amon Carter Museum.

“At Alcon, we believe programs such as the Carter’s Family Fundays provide a great educational experience for the whole family and make our community a more vibrant place to live,” says Sara Woodward, director, corporate humanitarian and community services and president of The Alcon Foundation.

The next Family Funday is scheduled for Sunday, August 9, with the theme What a Wonderful World. Artworks by African-American artists in The Harmon and Harriet Kelley Collection of African-American Art: Works on Paper exhibition and the Carter’s permanent collection will be featured. In addition, the NEA has awarded the museum two grants: an Access to Artistic Excellence grant, which will support the museum’s strategic plan to digitally document its entire collection, and an American Masterpieces: Visual Arts Touring grant that will help support the upcoming touring exhibition American Modern: Abbott, Evans, Bourke-White and its accompanying catalog and education programs. The exhibition, which opens at the Carter in the fall of 2010, will demonstrate how American photographers in the 1930s reinvented the documentary genre.

Antiques Roadshow Discovery on View at Amon Carter Museum

elizabeth — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 18:00:52 +0000

Release date:

May 20, 2009

FORT WORTH, Texas—When The Illustrious Guest (1847) appeared on the PBS program Antiques Roadshow earlier this year, appraiser Alan Fausel of the Bonhams auction house said the painting “could hang in a museum.” Now it is.

“I was intrigued by the painting when I saw it on the program,” says Rebecca Lawton, curator of paintings and sculpture at the Amon Carter Museum. “I called Alan and asked him to pass along my contact information to the owner because I wanted to see it in person. I’m so thankful the guest had already contacted Alan, making it possible for him to connect us, because now we have the privilege of displaying this wonderful painting in our museum.”

The 19th-century painting by James Henry Beard depicts legendary Kentucky statesman Henry Clay (1777–1852) as a guest at a country tavern while on the campaign trail. The work is on long-term loan to the Amon Carter Museum.

The Dallas owner, who remains anonymous, brought the painting to a Dallas taping of Antiques Roadshow last summer. On the episode that aired in January, she revealed that the painting had been in her family for more than six generations, and that they likely acquired it shortly after it was painted.

“It is a terrific genre subject that combines fact with fiction,” Lawton says. “The setting is accurate, as Clay, a veteran campaigner, certainly would have stopped at country taverns to solicit votes during the 1844 presidential election. Beard likely imagined the painting’s cast of characters, some of whom marvel at Clay’s elegant attire, while others eye him warily after identifying him from the guest register. This is a perfect picture of life in antebellum America and a wonderful rediscovery.”

About James Henry Beard

James Henry Beard (1811–1893) was born in Buffalo, N.Y., and at the age of 11 moved with his family to Painesville, Ohio. A self-taught artist, Beard worked for several years as a traveling portrait painter in Cincinnati, Louisville, New Orleans and Pittsburgh. He was an honorary member of the National Academy of Design from 1848 to 1860 and a full member until his death in 1872.

Beard’s genre paintings, or scenes of everyday life, of the 1840s are less well-known than his later satirical pictures and portraits of domestic pets. Like his younger brother, artist William Holbrook Beard (1824–1900), the elder Beard’s reputation now rests primarily on his paintings of animals.

Select Galleries Closed Temporarily for Maintenance

elizabeth — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 17:58:34 +0000

Release date:

April 21, 2009

Part of the museum’s first floor will be closed from May 19 through June 2 for floor resurfacing. During this time, the Museum Store and Auditorium will be closed. The Library will be open by appointment only. To access the museum’s second floor, patrons may use the stairs or elevator near the main entrance.

Amon Carter Museum Exhibits Esteemed Private Collection of African-American Art

elizabeth — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 17:57:44 +0000

Release date:

March 2, 2009

FORT WORTH, Texas—The works of more than 50 African-American artists from the late 1800s to the early years of this century will be on view at the Amon Carter Museum from June 6 through August 23, 2009, in the special exhibition The Harmon and Harriet Kelley Collection of African-American Art: Works on Paper. The Kelley collection is one of the most esteemed private collections of African-American art, and the special exhibition features more than 90 works on paper by artists such as Elizabeth Catlett, William H. Johnson, Alison Saar and Charles White.

Admission to all special exhibitions at the Amon Carter Museum is free.

Two significant eras are represented in the exhibition: the 1930s and 1940s, a period which saw the birth of African-American regionalism, and the 1960s and 1970s, which saw the rise of politically motivated and African-inspired themes; subjects range from racism and its related hardships to family, music and religion.

“An array of fascinating, vivid imagery makes this exhibition particularly compelling,” Myers says. “Virtually every work clearly emanates from the artists’ own powerful, personal narrative.”

The Kelleys have been collecting art since the mid-1980s, when they saw the exhibition Hidden Heritage: Afro-American Art, 1800–1950 at the San Antonio Museum of Art. Realizing they did not recognize any of the artists’ names, they vowed to educate themselves about this aspect of their heritage and built a collection to advance the legacy of African-American art.

“We are delighted the Amon Carter Museum has chosen to host this exhibition,” Harmon Kelley says. “Placing our drawings and prints in the context of the museum’s rich holdings of American art is a wonderful and unique opportunity.”

Concurrent to this exhibition, the one-gallery exhibition African-American Art: Selections from the Amon Carter Museum’s Collection is on view. This exhibition showcases some of the museum’s landmark prints and drawings from the same era as those in the Kelley show. Artists featured include Charles Alston, Grafton Tyler Brown, Elizabeth Catlett, William H. Johnson, Jacob Lawrence, William E. Smith, Dox Thrash, Charles White and John Wilson.

The Harmon and Harriet Kelley Collection of African-American Art: Works on Paper was organized by Landau Traveling Exhibitions, Los Angeles, California. African-American Art: Selections from the Amon Carter Museum’s Collection was organized by the Amon Carter Museum.

Public Programs: Admission is free.

Saturday, June 6, 11 a.m.
Changing the Rules: A Conversation with Harmon and Harriet Kelley and Bob Ray Sanders
Dialogue

Join the discussion as seasoned Fort Worth Star-Telegram columnist Bob Ray Sanders interviews Harmon and Harriet Kelley about their esteemed collection of African-American art.

Reservations are required as seating is limited. Please call 817.989.5030 to register; confirmation will be sent.

Sunday, July 12, 2 p.m.
Many Voices, Many Visions
Performance
Of Many Colors, Fort Worth music ensemble

Connect to the exhibition The Harmon and Harriet Kelley Collection of African-American Art: Works on Paper and the Carter’s permanent collection during this inspiring vocal concert by one of Fort Worth’s favorite music ensembles. The performance features music from the late 1800s into the 20th century and works of art by more than 50 African-American artists.

Reservations are required as seating is limited. Please call 817.989.5030 to register; confirmation will be sent.

Sunday, August 9, 1–4 p.m.
What a Wonderful World
Family Funday

Through looking and art-making activities, discover how artworks share stories, connect communities, and inspire our imaginations. Artworks by African-American artists in The Harmon and Harriet Kelley Collection of African-American Art: Works on Paper exhibition and the Carter’s permanent collection will be featured during this fun-filled family day.

Family Fundays are generously supported by Alcon.

Tours
Free public tours for this special exhibition occur at 3:30 p.m. Thursday through Sunday. No reservations are required.

Amon Carter Museum Schedule of Exhibitions: January through Spring 2009

elizabeth — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 17:25:27 +0000

Release date:

January 5, 2009

Focus on Photographs: Generations
Through February 8, 2009

The Amon Carter Museum photography collection includes the archives of three of the artists represented in this exhibition: Carlotta Corpron, Laura Gilpin and Karl Struss. Their archives contain prints, negatives and manuscripts, along with items such as photographs by other artists who played an important role in their lives and professional development. Through these archives and related material collected by the museum, viewers can learn about the traditions of photographic practice that extend through successive generations.

Mary Lucier: The Plains of Sweet Regret
Through February 15, 2009

A hauntingly beautiful world of landscape and loss, this video installation brings into view, through music and imagery, the rapid depopulation of the northern plains. Laced with both melancholy and loveliness, this work by video artist Mary Lucier examines the seismic changes that have swept away family farms and ranches, small towns and rural schools.

Mary Lucier: The Plains of Sweet Regret was commissioned by the North Dakota Museum of Art with funding from the National Endowment for the Arts. Production has been funded by the Creative Capital and the Rockefeller Foundation. Curated by Laurel Reuter, director, North Dakota Museum of Art.

An American Original: George Bellows, His Lithographs, and the 1936 Texas Centennial
Through April 19, 2009

The fascinating and diverse lithographs of famed American painter and printmaker George Bellows are featured in this special exhibition from the Carter’s permanent collection. The show reassembles Bellows’ 32 lithographs from the 1936 Texas Centennial Exposition in Dallas. Bellows was known for his ability to capture the truth of American life through his varied subject matter, which includes scenes of urban life, boxing, popular religion, portraits, female nudes and magazine illustrations.

First Look: Masterworks of American Photography
Through June 7, 2009

This is the first time these works — all part of the Amon Carter Museum photography collection — have been exhibited at the museum. Taken together, they reflect the diversity and richness of an American visual tradition.

Barbara Crane: Challenging Vision
February 14–May 10, 2009

For more than 60 years, Crane has been stretching the boundaries of photography. Through single images, sequences, grids and scrolls that range from intimate to grand, her photographs are dynamic, bold and abstract; they are vibrant depictions of the rural and urban, the familiar and esoteric. This exhibition — featuring nearly 200 photographs from Crane’s internationally heralded early studies of human form through her chronicle of Chicago city life to her recent explorations of nature — is the first major retrospective in more than 25 years of the photographer’s work. Organized by the Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs, this exhibition was guest curated by Kenneth C. Burkhart.

High Modernism: Alfred Stieglitz and His Legacy
March 7–June 28, 2009

Modern art photography is widely recognized as having been born in the 1910s from the work of Alfred Stieglitz and his hand-picked group of artists. Blending sharp focus, fine printing and overtly structured composition, these artists did not merely document life, they used the camera as a means to express intense emotional connection to the world. This exhibition follows the pathway set by Stieglitz and his colleagues through the work of his philosophical successor Minor White and photographers working today who subscribe to Stieglitz’s profound attachment to beauty and uplift.

The Harmon and Harriet Kelley Collection of African-American Art: Works on Paper
June 6–August 23, 2009

The works of more than 50 African-American artists from the late 1800s to the early years of this century are on view in this special exhibition. Drawn from the Harmon and Harriet Kelley Collection — an esteemed private collection of works by African-American artists — the exhibition features more than 90 works on paper by artists such as Elizabeth Catlett, William H. Johnson, Alison Saar and Charles White. The exhibition was organized by Landau Traveling Exhibitions, Los Angeles, California.

Concurrent to this exhibition, the Carter will mount the one-gallery exhibition African-American Art: Selections from the Amon Carter Museum’s Collection. Showcasing some of the museum’s landmark prints and drawings from the same era as those in the Kelley exhibition, this exhibition’s featured artists include Charles Alton, Grafton Tyler Brown, Elizabeth Catlett, William H. Johnson, Jacob Lawrence, William E. Smith, Dox Thrash, Charles White and John Wilson.

Amon Carter Museum Publishes Gift Book Charles M. Russell’s Illustrated Letters

elizabeth — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 21:03:20 +0000

Release date:

December 15, 2008

FORT WORTH, Texas—A new book published by the Amon Carter Museum reveals a different side of famed cowboy artist Charles M. Russell — humorist and illustrator.

Russell produced thousands of paintings and sculptures over his 33-year career, but beyond these works, he generated more than 400 pieces of correspondence, most of which he illustrated. The 100 Best Illustrated Letters of Charles M. Russell, edited by Russell authority Brian Dippie and published by the Carter, brings together for the first time the 100 most beloved of these letters.

“The letters in this beautiful book were drawn from both private and public collections around the country and a number have never been reproduced before now,” says Amon Carter Museum Director Ron Tyler. “One of my favorites is Charlie’s illustrated homage to the ‘canyon mule.’ Both Russell enthusiasts and those new to his work will find great enjoyment in this book.”

The 9½ x 11 inch, 216-page book includes 193 color reproductions of Russell’s letters, a removable “to scale” letter and envelope replica, and a foreword — written in 1925 — by the Cowboy Artist himself. The book retails for $50 and is available at the Amon Carter Museum Store and online at cartermuseum.org/store. For more information, call 800.573.1933.

Amon Carter Museum Presents Barbara Crane: Challenging Vision

elizabeth — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 18:22:54 +0000

Release date:

November 24, 2008

FORT WORTH, Texas—On February 14, 2009, the Amon Carter Museum will present Barbara Crane: Challenging Vision, the first major retrospective in more than 25 years of the photographer’s work. This exhibition features nearly 200 photographs, from Crane’s internationally heralded early studies of human form through her chronicle of Chicago city life to her recent explorations of nature. The exhibition will be on view through May 10, 2009, before moving on to the organizer’s venue, the Chicago Cultural Center.

Admission to all special exhibitions at the Amon Carter Museum is free.

“Barbara Crane has long been one of America’s most influential teachers and respected artists,” says the Carter’s Senior Curator of Photographs John Rohrbach. “Her highly experimental and tremendously varied photographs animatedly challenge photography’s very character as a descriptive tool. This show exudes her infectious energy and imagination. Anyone who sees it will never look at photographs the same way again.”

For more than 60 years, Crane (b. 1928) has been stretching the boundaries of photography. Through single images, sequences, grids and scrolls that range in size from intimate to grand, her photographs are dynamic, bold and abstract; they are vibrant depictions of the rural and urban, the familiar and esoteric.

Crane herself has explained the sources of her art:

“I’ve always been drawn to avant-garde, cutting edge art forms and have tried to find my inspiration in mediums other than photography,” she says. “As an art history student, I became interested in Asian art and was heavily influenced by Japanese scrolls, screens, prints and calligraphy. I was inspired by Frank Lloyd Wright’s and Corbusier’s daring ‘modern’ architecture, by the innovative aesthetic of the German Bauhaus, by the custom-defying independence of modern dance, and by the music of John Cage.

“To this day, I carry a small spiral notebook when attending a concert or visiting a museum to record what I find exciting for my future use—such as the pattern of musical rhythms, the dynamic of color combinations and spatial relationships, and adjacencies of color in Renaissance and Medieval paintings. I translate these influences into the endless options offered by photography.”

Crane has been the recipient of many grants, awards and fellowships, including National Endowment for the Arts grants in 1975 and 1988, a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship in Photography in 1979, and an Illinois Arts Council Artists Fellowship Award in Photography in 2001. Her work is represented in major collections around the country, including the George Eastman House in Rochester, N.Y.; the Art Institute of Chicago; the Center for Creative Photography in Tucson, Ariz.; and the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

Barbara Crane: Challenging Vision is accompanied by a fully illustrated 250-page publication with essays by Abigail Foerstner, of the Medill School of Journalism Northwestern University, and Amon Carter Museum Senior Curator of Photographs John Rohrbach.

Organized by the Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs, this exhibition was guest curated by Kenneth C. Burkhart.

Public Programs: Admission is free.

Saturday, February 14, 11 a.m.
Preoccupied with Making Art
Amon Carter Museum Lectures on American Photography
Underwriting provided by the Anne Burnett Tandy Endowment
Barbara Crane, artist

There is no perfect moment to make art, no one rule about how or where to make it. It is, instead, about a lifelong preoccupation. Renowned photographer Barbara Crane discusses the rewarding discomfort that is the artistic process — the restlessness of the mind, the discipline of habit, and the tapping into the unconscious.

Reservations are required; seating is limited. Please call 817.989.5057 by February 11 to register; confirmation will be sent.

Amon Carter Museum Acquires Anna Hyatt Huntington’s The Team and Jean Xceron’s White and Gray, no. 256

elizabeth — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 20:33:01 +0000

Release date:

November 20, 2008

FORT WORTH, Texas—Amon Carter Museum Director Ron Tyler announced today the acquisition of two 20th century American works: a bronze sculpture entitled The Team by Anna Hyatt Huntington (1876–1973) and a painting entitled White and Gray, no. 256 by Jean Xceron (1890–1967). Both works can be seen in the museum’s painting and sculpture galleries.

The Team
Anna Hyatt Huntington was one of the most prominent early 20th century animaliers, artists who specialize in the realistic portrayal of animals. The Team, a bronze of two draft horses working in tandem, is one of Huntington’s early works.

“With the purchase of The Team, we have significantly added to our collection of notable animal sculptures, which includes works by a number of Huntington’s contemporaries—Gutzon Borglum, William Stanley Haseltine, Alexander Proctor, Frederic Remington and Charles Russell,” Tyler says.

Huntington produced The Team in 1903 at the Roman Bronze Works foundry, one year after her formal training with George Grey Barnard and Hermon Atkins MacNeil at the Art Students League in New York. Depicting the harsh conditions of work horses, the piece’s subjects move precariously down an incline. Harnessed together, one horse is resolute, the other is struggling.

“The Team is a testament to Huntington’s natural artistic gifts, keen powers of observation, and challenging compositions, all hallmarks of a masterwork,” says Rebecca Lawton, curator of paintings and sculpture. “She so perfectly captures the essence of these horses and their fiery spirits. We are privileged to have it in our collection and share it with others.”

White and Gray, no. 256
White and Gray, no. 256, painted in 1941, is among Greek-born American painter Jean Xceron’s most refined and rigorously constructed abstractions. Influenced by the movements of Cubism, Neoplasticism, Suprematism and Constructivism, the oil on canvas joins a variety of abstract works by Alexander Calder, Stuart Davis and John Ferren in the museum’s permanent collection.

“White and Gray, no. 256 supplements a growing and impressive collection of abstract art in the Carter’s collection,” Tyler says. “The work provides an important bridge between the first and second generation of American abstract artists.”

In the painting, Xceron employs a series of rectilinear elements of various sizes and grid lines of diverse thickness, positioning them vertically and horizontally against a subtly modulated background. Moreover, the use of subdued tones for some of the shapes and lines allows them to appear to hover above the background, which shimmers, creating a radiant backdrop. The solid black rectangle at center left presents a darkened void, which is countered by the luminous and larger white rectangle at right. Xceron’s precise orchestration of elements is beautifully balanced, achieving an overall formal unity that suggests weightless and suspended energy.

“With White and Gray, no. 256, Xceron achieves great compositional harmony and a purer, more elegant formalism than is seen in his earlier work,” Lawton says. “The painting epitomizes his mature style, reflecting both the range of styles he had absorbed in Paris, as well as his own interpretation of them. Abstract art enthusiasts will certainly delight in this piece.”

About Anna Hyatt Huntington (1876–1973)
Anna Hyatt Huntington was raised in Cambridge, Mass., where her family fostered her love of animals and encouraged her to develop her artistic talents. She studied with Henry Hudson Kitson in Boston, with Hermon Atkins MacNeil and George Grey Barnard at the Art Students League in New York, as well as with Gutzon Borglum. Huntington worked with her sister Harriet Hyatt Mayor early in her career and later collaborated with Abastenia St. Leger Eberle on many large works.

In the early 1900’s Huntington sold her work through the Boston emporium Shreve, Crump and Low. At a show at the Boston Art Club, her first major patron, the legendary Boston financier Thomas W. Lawson, likely encountered her work. He considered her “the coming Rosa Bonheur” and eventually owned a sizable number of her bronzes.

After working several years in Boston and New York, Huntington went abroad to work in Italy and France, where she created the life-sized, bronze sculpture Joan of Arc. After returning to New York City, she produced many pieces from 1911 to 1917, receiving much acclaim. In 1912 she was listed as one of 12 U.S. women earning $50,000 annually.

Huntington married philanthropist and scholar Archer Milton Huntington in 1923. They purchased Brookgreen Gardens in South Carolina as a place of respite after Anna contracted tuberculosis in 1927. The gardens became a public showcase for more than 300 sculptures—a mix of Huntington’s work as well as her collected pieces. After she recovered, Anna and her husband moved to Connecticut in 1939, where she continued working until a few years before her death at age 97.

About Jean Xceron (1890–1967)
Jean Xceron’s formal training occurred while attending the Corcoran School of Art in Washington, D.C., from 1910 to 1917. He moved to New York City in 1920, where he met Joaquin Torres-García, who became an early mentor. By 1927 Xceron had moved to Paris, earning a living as an art critic for the Chicago Tribune and the Boston Evening Transcript. But more importantly, Xceron immersed himself in abstract art through direct contact with a number of Europe’s major abstractionists including Jean Arp, Albert Gleizes, Jean Hélion, Wassily Kandinsky, Fernand Léger, Piet Mondrian and Theo van Doesburg, among others. With an exhibition of his work in 1931 at the prestigious Galerie de France, Xceron made a name for himself among Parisian art circles, which served him well upon his return to the United States in late 1937.

Xceron’s move back to New York coincided with the development of the “second wave” of abstract art in America. The American Abstract Artists (AAA) was formed in 1936, and the Museum of Non-Objective Painting, containing the Solomon R. Guggenheim Collection, opened in 1939. Xceron was eagerly embraced by the artists within AAA for his firsthand knowledge of European abstraction. Hilla Rebay, Solomon Guggenheim’s art adviser and the founding director of his museum, quickly purchased several Xceron paintings for Guggenheim’s collection and hired the artist to work as an artist/curator at the museum, a position he held until his death in 1967.

Coy Fagras Named Grant Program Manager at Amon Carter Museum

elizabeth — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 20:28:17 +0000

Release date:

October 16, 2008

FORT WORTH, Texas—Amon Carter Museum Director of Development Carol Noel announced today that Coy Fagras has been named Grant Program Manager.

Fagras will be responsible for implementing and maintaining the grants and corporate underwriting programs for the museum, working with Noel and the development staff to identify funding prospects and employ strategies to support museum programs.

“Although the museum is incredibly fortunate to have the Amon G. Carter Foundation fund about 80 percent of its operating budget, we must raise nearly $2 million each year to support special exhibitions, education programs and other initiatives,” said Noel. “Fagras’ experience in seeking and managing grants from foundations makes her a great addition to our development team.”

Previously, Fagras worked as the lead grant writer and researcher at a Dallas-based political nonprofit organization, where she was responsible for constructing annual gift grants on varying policy issues. She has also worked as grant writer at a technology and design firm, procuring funds for high-end government technology projects, and as a grants and proposal manager at an architecture firm.

Fagras received her Bachelor of Arts in English from the University of North Florida in Jacksonville. She studied nonprofit management and public administration at the University of Arkansas.

“The Carter is a vital part of our community tapestry,” said Fagras. “Being able to work with this dedicated staff is an honor, and I look forward to fostering and developing new opportunities to showcase the very best in American art.”

Amon Carter Museum Presents Video Installation by Artist Mary Lucier

elizabeth — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 19:57:22 +0000

Release date:

September 16, 2008

FORT WORTH, Texas—On November 15, the Amon Carter Museum will present the first video installation in the institution’s history, Mary Lucier: The Plains of Sweet Regret. This one-work exhibition, an 18-minute, five-channel video work, will occupy an entire gallery, filling the space with beautiful yet haunting images of the Great Plains in North Dakota. The images are accompanied by an evocative score by composer Earl Howard that captures the character of the land. It will be on view through February 15, 2009.

Admission to all special exhibitions at the Amon Carter Museum is free.

“This work presents an extraordinary opportunity to experience the richness of video art by an artist at the top of her form,” says Jessica May, assistant curator of photography. “We are privileged to present this work, which I believe will have special resonance in this urban region of North Texas. Many of us were born in the country and have moved into the city. Many of us have family in small towns. The Plains of Sweet Regret will remind us all of the wonderful, fragile way of life rural communities foster.”

Lucier (b. 1944) was invited to create the work by the North Dakota Museum of Art as part of its continuing series of commissions called the Emptying out of the Plains, which addresses the issue of rural depopulation in the upper Midwest. Comparable to West Texas, many areas in the upper Plains have suffered drastic population reductions in the past 50 years as young people have moved to the cities and family farming—once a staple of American life—has become increasingly scarce.

The Plains of Sweet Regret will offer visitors to the Amon Carter Museum a new art experience, one closely in tune with the changing media of our time, but which resonates with the museum’s permanent collection.

Mary Lucier is a pioneering figure in the history of video art, and her works were among the first to be acquired by institutions such as the Whitney Museum of American Art and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Lucier was born in Bucyrus, Ohio, and has lived and worked in New York City since 1974.

Public Programs: Admission is free.

Saturday, November 15, 11 a.m.
Video Installations, 1975–2008
Lecture
Mary Lucier, artist

Internationally acclaimed video artist Mary Lucier will discuss the evolution of her work—from her first experiments with the medium in the 1970s to one of her most recent video installations, The Plains of Sweet Regret, on view at the Carter November 15, 2008– February 15, 2009. A book signing of the exhibition catalog follows in the Museum Store.

Reservations are required; seating is limited. Please call 817.989.5057 to register; confirmation will be sent.

Amon Carter Museum Appoints New Public Information Officer

admin — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 15:14:42 +0000

Release date:

September 11, 2008

FORT WORTH, Texas—Amon Carter Museum Director Ron Tyler announced today that Tracy Greene has been named public information officer. In her new position, Greene will promote the museum regionally and nationally, and will work to build ongoing awareness and support for the Carter and its programs.

“Tracy brings a great deal of marketing and PR experience to the museum, and she knows the community,” Tyler said. “We are confident that she will be an asset to the museum and expand awareness of its collection, exhibitions and programs.”

Greene has nearly 10 years of marketing, PR and communications experience. Prior to joining the museum, she served as senior communications specialist for Texas Health Resources. She has also served as communications manager for the Fort Worth Zoo and as a senior account executive at a Fort Worth advertising and public relations agency. Greene holds a Bachelor of Science in advertising and public relations from Texas Christian University and is a member of the Greater Fort Worth chapter of Public Relations Society of America.

“The Amon Carter Museum is a national treasure,” Greene said. “To work for an organization with such a wonderful mission is an incredible opportunity, and I am thrilled to be a part of its dynamic team.”

Free Family Fun Continues at the Amon Carter Museum

admin — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 19:12:10 +0000

Release date:

September 10, 2008

FORT WORTH, Texas—The Amon Carter Museum is excited to introduce its latest activity for visitors: the Postcard Tour. The Postcard Tour is a free family activity that both adults and children can use to better connect with the museum’s collection of American paintings and sculpture.

Seven popular artworks are presented in the Postcard Tour. Each card features a color reproduction of the work of art along with questions that adults and children can use to interact with the artwork and with each other. Sets of the Postcard Tour are available at the Information Desk. The first 450 Postcard Tours are free for visitors to keep; additional copies will be available for free checkout and use while at the museum.

“It is my hope that the Postcard Tour will inspire children and adults alike to make discoveries and participate in great discussions that help them connect to our collection in meaningful ways,” says Nora Christie Puckett, the Carter’s student, family, and adult program manager.

This activity is made possible in part by a generous grant from the JPMorgan Chase Foundation.

Multilayered Story of Nineteenth-Century America Revealed in Special Exhibition at the Amon Carter Museum, Fall 2008

admin — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 16:04:51 +0000

Release date:

July 17, 2008

FORT WORTH, Texas—Visitors to the Amon Carter Museum can embark on a captivating visual adventure this fall in a special exhibition of paintings and drawings by Alfred Jacob Miller (1810–1874), the first American artist to journey into the heart of the Rocky Mountains. Sentimental Journey: The Art of Alfred Jacob Miller, on view September 20, 2008–January 11, 2009, features more than 85 works that offer firsthand depictions of the Lakota, Shoshone, Nez Perces, and other American Indian societies, as well as the last of the fur trappers and traders of the nineteenth-century American West.

Admission to all special exhibitions at the Amon Carter Museum is free.

“Miller took the people and scenery he encountered on his 1837 trip to the Rocky Mountains and created paintings with many layers of meaning out of seemingly simple western genre scenes, giving them intangible qualities such as mood and emotion,” said Lisa Strong, guest curator of the exhibition and author of the exhibition’s companion publication. “In doing this, he produced images that were more innovative and compelling than those of many of his peers working in the West or the East.”

“The title of this exhibition, though it may remind people of the popular song, was carefully chosen,” added Rick Stewart, the museum’s senior curator of western painting and sculpture. “During Miller’s lifetime, sentimentalism was an important means of identifying, inspiring, or guiding moral action. Sentiments are feelings guided by thoughts. This exhibition will demonstrate how Miller was not only interested in depicting western subjects, but also portraying them through the filter of his own nineteenth-century sensibilities as an artist.”

As Miller’s paintings communicate different stories, ideas and feelings, Sentimental Journey will offer visitors a multilayered experience: a compelling opportunity to follow Miller’s escapades in the American West with his patron, Scottish aristocrat and adventurer Sir William Drummond Stewart; a view into the ironic parallels between America’s emerging national identity during the 19th century and that of the Scottish highlander identity; an insight into the life and career of an artist of the American West whose name is less well-known and whose career is less understood than some of his contemporaries; and the story of a great visual artist as a commercially successful businessman, who painted a limited repertoire of western subjects again and again in a changing artistic style that remained relevant and appealing to successive audiences during his lifetime.

Alfred Jacob Miller and Sir William Drummond Stewart

Alfred Jacob Miller was born and raised in Baltimore. He studied portraiture with the painter Thomas Sully from 1831–32. He then traveled in 1833 to Paris to study at the École des Beaux-Arts and later at the English Life School in Rome. When he returned to America, he opened a portrait studio in Baltimore but had limited success. In 1837 he moved to New Orleans, where he encountered Sir William Drummond Stewart, a Scottish nobleman who had served with distinction at the battle of Waterloo 20 years earlier. Stewart had come to America to experience the allure of the trans-Mississippi West, with its abundance of game for hunting, the rugged fur trappers and traders who carved out a living there, and the nomadic American Indians who roamed its vast spaces. When the two men met, Stewart was preparing for his fifth trek west to attend the annual rendezvous of trappers at Horse Creek in the Wind River Mountains in Wyoming. Stewart immediately admired Miller’s work and invited him to join his expedition to record its exploits.

From the Rockies to Baltimore

Although Miller spent more than six months in the West, the number of works he actually produced while on this trip is relatively small—approximately 100. Shortly after his return to Baltimore in the autumn of 1837, Miller reworked his field sketches into an album of 87 watercolors for Stewart. This important sketchbook, which formed the basis for Miller’s subsequent paintings, was broken apart in the 1960s, its pages scattered into different collections. This exhibition will reunite many of these sketchbook pages for the first time and show how they relate to the artist’s later oil paintings. After he finished the sketchbook, Miller journeyed to Scotland to paint at least ten large oils for Stewart at his ancestral home, Murthly Castle. The work that he created for his patron featured Stewart at the center of the action: leading the expedition, hunting on the prairies, or engaging in acts of diplomacy with the Indians. The exhibition will show how this imagery tied in with Stewart’s interests and the rise of Scottish nationalism in the same period.

Returning to America, Miller spent the rest of his life painting and repainting western subjects for Baltimore’s patrons and citizens. He managed to develop patronage among Baltimore merchants whose business interests included the American West, men who sought the frontiers of opportunity that the West presented and who were willing to invest their resources there. For these patrons, Miller painted his subjects in a stylized, romantic, and sentimental manner, capitalizing on the prevalent tastes and trends of his time by drawing from the story lines and characterizations that could be found in the popular literature of the day. Miller connected to his patrons by constructing visual metaphors for the changes that were taking place at that time within the subject matter of the West: Indians, mountain men, and the untamed landscape.

Miller and the Art of the American West

Miller is regarded as one of the preeminent antebellum painters of the American West. Because his images of American Indians and the waning fur trade are so engaging and early examples of such subjects are relatively rare in western American art, historians have typically focused on the content of his works rather than his artistry. With this exhibition, the much more rich and complex nature of his contribution to American art can be understood. In the face of keen competition from other painters of the West, such as George Catlin, Seth Eastman and John Mix Stanley, Miller succeeded in painting his western subjects in a way that was compelling, relevant and appealing, creating metaphors for social change taking place both in the United States and Scotland that were immediately recognizable and therefore attractive and engaging to audiences at home and abroad for more than three decades

The exhibition is accompanied by a 240-page publication of the same name. With more than 100 four-color reproductions, the book will “set a new scholarly standard for monographs on western art,” said William H. Truettner, senior curator at the Smithsonian American Art Museum.

Sentimental Journey: The Art of Alfred Jacob Miller is organized by the Amon Carter Museum and was made possible in part by generous support from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Mary Potishman Lard Trust, the Katrine Menzing Deakins Charitable Trust, the Crystelle Waggoner Charitable Trust, and the U.S. Trust.

Public Programs: Admission is free.

Saturday, October 11, 10 a.m.
Alfred Jacob Miller: East to West
Anne Burnett Tandy Distinguished Lectures in American Art, Symposium
Speakers

Dr. John Mack Faragher, Arthur Unobskey Professor of American History and Director, Howard R. Lamar Center for the Study of Frontiers and Borders, Yale University
Dr. Jennifer Greenhill, assistant professor of American art, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
Dr. Kenneth Haltman, associate professor of art history, University of Oklahoma
Dr. Lisa Strong, independent scholar and guest curator of Sentimental Journey: The Art of Alfred Jacob Miller
Dr. Ron Tyler, director, Amon Carter Museum

Reservations are required; seating is limited. Please call 817.989.5057 by October 1 to register; confirmation will be sent.

Sunday, October 12, 1 p.m.
Expectations, Explorations, and Destinations
Target Family Fun Day

Time travel through art! Create your own travel journal and listen to adventurous tales from the frontier.

Target Family Fun Days are generously supported by Target.

Thursday, December 4, 6 p.m.
Paintings of Alfred Jacob Miller: Above and Below the Surface
Conservation in Context Gallery Talk
Claire Barry, chief conservator of paintings, Kimbell Art Museum and Amon Carter Museum

There is more to Miller’s painting than meets the eye. Barry’s talk will take us beneath the surface of what we see and reveal new information about the nineteenth-century artist’s methods.

The Results Are in at the Amon Carter Museum

pr — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 20:45:06 +0000

Release date:

June 18, 2008

Free Visitors’ Voice Interactive Tours Focus on Votes from Decision 2008

The polls are closed for the Amon Carter Museum’s Decision 2008 “special election,” and the votes have been tallied.

And the winner is… A Dash for the Timber (1889) by Frederic Remington (1861–1909).

Launched by the museum in March, Decision 2008 was an opportunity for visitors of all ages to vote for their favorite work of art from the museum’s permanent collection of American paintings and sculpture. Best of all—and unlike a political election—voters could explain on the ballot why they chose that particular “candidate.”

The museum is now presenting four free interactive Visitors’ Voice tours, the first of which is on Thursday, June 19 at 6 p.m. Each tour in the series features a new theme influenced by voters’ selections and insights on the works of art.

Regarding Remington’s Dash, one voter said, “The painting has action, drama, motion, and an amazing sense of urgency. Sometimes I think I see it as a metaphor that we’re all being chased by something, so we’d better pray for fast horses and accurate friends!”

A Dash for the Timber, regarded by many art historians as the crowning achievement of Remington’s career, is indeed noted for its “cinematic effect,” said Senior Curator of Western Art Rick Stewart. “Its action-packed portrayal of the struggle for life on the frontier anticipates the genre of the western film, which was to follow a generation later.”

Coming in at a close second and third respectively were Grant Wood’s Parson Weems’ Fable (1939) and Thomas Cole’s The Hunter’s Return (1845).

“It’s interesting to note that these three paintings have a clear ‘American-ness’ to them,” said Nora Christie Puckett, the Carter’s student, family, and adult programs manager. “So during the first Visitors’ Voice program on June 19, we’ll talk about these works, the responses they inspired, and their connection to our shared American identity. Subsequent Visitors’ Voice tours will explore the election’s ‘one-hit wonders,’ take on an end-of-the-year awards ceremony theme, and focus on the enduring appeal that the museum’s collection has with visitors young and old.”

Visitors’ Voice Schedule:
Thursday, June 19, 6 p.m.
Saturday, June 28, 3 p.m.
Thursday, July 10, 6 p.m.
Saturday, July 26, 3 p.m.

Admission is free; no reservations are required.

View the museum’s calendar of events at http://www.cartermuseum.org/calendar. Hours are Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday 10 a.m.–5 p.m.; Thursday 10 a.m.–8 p.m.; Sunday Noon–5 p.m.; closed Mondays and major holidays.

New Installations at the Amon Carter Museum Feature Captivating Photographs, Rare Prints

pr — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 16:27:10 +0000

Release date:

May 13, 2008

A visit to the Amon Carter Museum in Fort Worth right now promises three new experiences as three new exhibitions drawn from its renowned collection of American art are on view.

Admission to the Amon Carter Museum is free.

Nell Dorr: From Everlasting to Everlasting features more than 50 poignant photographs in this first ever opportunity to see a comprehensive survey of the work of Nell Dorr (1893–1988). Regarded as one of the 20th century’s most spiritual and empathetic photographers, Dorr rose to prominence in the 1950s as a chronicler of the intimate relationships between mothers and young children. She was also an explorer of evocative concepts such as mood, atmosphere, and feeling. Although Dorr’s life was rocked by the Great Depression, the historic wars of the 20th century, and the emergence of modern mass culture, she consistently made photographs that turned away from the everyday toward a romantic and rustic world in which past and present intermingled and women and children predominated. Increasingly throughout her life, she strove to create images that reflected spiritual rather than material values. The photographs in this exhibition are drawn from Nell Dorr’s archive, one of several archives that are housed at the Amon Carter Museum. These works will on display through October 6.

The new Masterworks of American Photography installation, on view through November 16, celebrates some of the Carter’s recent acquisitions, intermixed with photographs to which these new prints relate. The museum began collecting and exhibiting photographs within months of its opening in 1961 and has sustained a strong commitment to the medium ever since. Today the photography collection holds more than 40,000 exhibition prints that span the medium’s American history from 1840 to the present. The collection has particular strengths in images of the American West, yet the holdings encompass all facets within the classic traditions of fine art photography. Any collection of this size and stature is assembled through a mixture of purchases and gifts assembled by multiple people over time. Newer works are added not merely to reflect the finest examples of American photography but with careful attention to how these images fit and amplify on existing holdings.

Visitors will also see a stunning group of prints that renowned sculptor Louise Nevelson (1899–1988) created in 1963 and 1967 during fellowships at the famed Tamarind Lithography Workshop in Los Angeles. These inventive prints, in which she created patterns with fabrics such as lace and cheesecloth, share with her sculpture an interest in silhouetted forms and the layering of elements, but distinguish themselves by their incorporation of vivid color. An example of Nevelson’s monochromatic sculpture, Lunar Landscape Wall (1959–60), can be seen on the second floor of the museum. Senior Curator of Prints and Drawings Jane Myers and Paper Conservator Jodie Utter will present a gallery talk on these virtually unknown lithographs on Thursday, July 24, at 6 p.m.

Families, Take Note: The Amon Carter Museum is the Place to be for Summer 2008

admin — Tue, 13 May 2008 15:14:16 +0000

Release date:

May 1, 2008

FORT WORTH, Texas—Parents, fear not: cultural opportunities that are fun, free and cool (as in “temperature” and “dude”) await this summer at the Amon Carter Museum. Storytime at the Carter, Target Family Fun Days, and a brand new New Parents Tour offer a variety of options for children to have fun while discovering great American art and for adults to enjoy artistic stimulation while getting out of the heat.

Back by popular demand, Storytime at the Carter returns to the museum. Artworks tell tales and books paint pictures as educators read captivating stories that bring the museum’s artworks to life. These programs, held every Wednesday 10:30–11: 15 a.m. from June 11 through July 30, are great for kids up to six years old and include fun activities and refreshments. This year, Storytime at the Carter is brought to you in part by a grant from the JPMorgan Chase Foundation.

The Carter’s continuing series of Target Family Fun Days will be presented on the second Sunday of each month of June, July and August. These popular programs feature great storytelling, interactive gallery tours, lots of creative art-making activities, plus cookies and lemonade.

Debuting this summer, the New Parents Tour program is a great way for parents with pre-toddlers to get out of the house and enjoy some much-needed mental stimulation and adult conversation. On June 27, July 25 and August 29, moms and/or dads can pack up the baby stroller and come to the Carter for tours that will introduce them (with babies in tow) to a variety of artworks in the collection. Parents are invited to attend one or all of the tours in the series, and of course, there will be refreshments!

Details on summer family programs at the Carter are listed below. Information on these and other summer public programs is also available at http://www.cartermuseum.org/calendar. All of these programs are free and open to the public. For more information, please call 817.989.5031.

Storytime at the Carter

Every Wednesday June 11–July 30, 10:30 – 11:15 a.m.
Activities and refreshments follow each program.
These programs are brought to you in part by a grant from the JPMorgan Chase Foundation

Wednesday, June 11
Pretty Patterns
Bring your children to hear a reading of Look! Look! Look! by Nancy Elizabeth and Linda K. Friedlaender, a wonderful book that will inspire them to see unusual patterns and shapes in works of art. You’ll have fun looking together at the Carter’s beautiful portrait Alice Vanderbilt Shepard (1888) by John Singer Sargent.

Wednesday, June 18
Squiggles, Shapes, and Swirls
Celebrate creativity and see beauty in the colorful squiggles, shapes, and swirls found in the artworks of Stuart Davis and Georgia O’Keeffe. Young children will discover that all creative efforts deserve to be framed in Badly Drawn Dog by Emma Dodson and Ish by Peter H. Reynolds.

Wednesday, June 25
Dots and Dashes
Discover how dots and dashes transform into beautiful Impressionist paintings. Hear how the wonderful and rewarding feeling of youthful self-expression comes to life in Ain’t Gonna Paint No More by Karen and David Beaumont and The Dot by Peter H. Reynolds.

Wednesday, July 2
Fun with Founding Fathers
Children will get into the Fourth-of-July spirit as they hear two great stories about our country’s founding fathers: Liar, Liar, Pants on Fire by Diane deGroat and John, Paul, George & Ben by Lane Smith. Both books will be read in front of patriotic paintings in the Carter’s collection.

Wednesday, July 9
Artful Adventures
Hear how a special bear uses his imagination, determination, and resourcefulness to survive several adventures in Henry Climbs a Mountain and Henry Builds a Cabin, both by D. B. Johnson. These two great children’s books will be read in front of The Hunter’s Return (1845) by Thomas Cole.

Wednesday, July 16
Cowboy Charlie
Children will love hearing about the adventurous life and wonderful art of Charles M. Russell in Cowboy Charlie, a fun children’s story by Jeanette Winter. They’ll also see action-packed paintings created by Charlie himself.

Wednesday, July 23
Catch the Building Bug
The museum’s beautiful building by renowned architect Philip Johnson is the perfect location for listening to hear Nina Laden’s story, Roberto the Insect Architect, about a termite and his fascination with the allure and wonderment of architecture.

Wednesday, July 30
Bears in the Building!
Come along and see how two clever bears use art to change their lives. Bear Hunt by Anthony Browne and Drawing Lessons from a Bear by David McPhail will keep children captivated as they look at two great works from the Carter’s collection—a dramatic landscape painting and an endearing sculpture of a bear cub.

Target Family Fun Days

Second Sunday of the month, 1–4 p.m.
Refreshments are offered during each program.
Target Family Fun Days are generously supported by Target.

Sunday, June 8
Picture It!
Strike a pose! Find portraits in the galleries and learn how artists create pictures of other people and themselves. Then, put your best face forward by creating your own self-portrait in different artistic styles.

Sunday, July 13
Myths, Heroes, and Legends
Join us for a legendary day at the Carter! Listen to heroic tales and amazing legends based on your favorite artworks. Learn about a hero’s qualities and make your own tall tale.

Sunday, August 10
Canyons, Clouds, and Colors
What does your world look like? Tour the galleries and create your own scenic surrounding based on the special exhibition, Marsden Hartley and the West: The Search for an American Modernism.

New Parents Tours

Tours begin outside the Museum Store. Reservations are not required, but we recommend that parents call 817.989.5031 to receive helpful instructions.

Dates
Friday, June 27, 10:30–11:30 a.m.
Friday, July 25, 10:30–11:30 a.m.
Friday, August 29, 10:30–11:30 a.m.

Hip Pocket Theatre and Amon Carter Museum Present Tempest in a Dream

pr — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 20:46:47 +0000

Release date:

March 25, 2008

Hip Pocket Theatre and the Amon Carter Museum are presenting a fun, fanciful and family-friendly take on Shakespeare in a special play that honors Dickson and Flora Reeder, two of the artists featured in the special exhibition Intimate Modernism: Fort Worth Circle Artists in the 1940s, on view at the Carter through May 11.

The couple founded their Reeder Children’s Theater and Design School in Fort Worth in 1945, and for the next 12 years enabled hundreds of Fort Worth youth and their parents to experience a panoramic view of the interrelation of the arts. With Dickson Reeder creating the sets and costumes and Flora’s in charge of training the young actors, the school’s curriculum allowed children, ages four to fourteen, to undertake the study of a single play over the course of each school year, culminating in a spring performance.

Tempest in a Dream, adapted and directed by Hip Pocket Theatre’s Diane Simons, intertwines the plots of The Tempest and A Midsummer Night’s Dream into a story that pays tribute to the Reeder’s efforts with the school and its impact on the community.

“The Reeders left an enormous legacy that has not only directly affected and inspired the Hip Pocket Theatre but also countless artists ** visual, musical and of course theatrical,” Simons said. “I came across Flora’s script for The Tempest, and some of her cutting and musical notations are used in this performance.”

Tempest in a Dream will be presented in the Back Gallery at the Fort Worth Community Arts Center at 1300 Gendy Street, just across the street from the Amon Carter Museum. The gallery’s capacity is 125, and there are four performance times: Saturday, April 5, 7 p.m., Sunday, April 6, 2 p.m., Friday, April 11, 7 p.m., Saturday, April 12, 7 p.m.

Admission is free; tickets are available on a first-come, first-served basis by calling the museum at 8179895057 or e-mailing education [at] cartermuseum [dot] org.

This program is made possible by the generous support of the Betty Sanders Family.