Fort Worth, TX, March 7, 2008—Dave Hickey, one of the best-known American art and cultural critics working today, will present a lecture entitled Fort Worth: How Cowtown Became a Center for Art in the West at the Amon Carter Museum on Saturday, March 29, at 11 a.m. The lecture is in conjunction with the special exhibition Intimate Modernism: Fort Worth Circle Artists in the 1940s.

Admission to the lecture is free; visitors are asked to register by calling 817.989.5057.

Hickey is a native of Fort Worth. He has written for dozens of major American publications including Rolling Stone, Art News, Art in America, Artforum, and Vanity Fair. His critical essays have been published in two volumes: The Invisible Dragon: Four Essays on Beauty (1993) and Air Guitar: Essays on Art and Democracy (1997). He has been the subject of profiles in The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, U.S. News and World Report, and Texas Monthly, among others.

About the Fort Worth Circle, Hickey once wrote: “It is reassuring to me personally, and I would hope to others as well, just to know that for one swift decade in this part of the country a group of functioning, contemporary artists who believed in the seriousness of their endeavor, lived and flourished in a community which believed in them, attended their exhibitions, and purchased their work.”

Hickey will share his insights on how the work of the Fort Worth Circle relates to other artistic and creative movements that were emerging during the same time period throughout the western United States. Intimate Modernism: Fort Worth Circle Artists in the 1940s will be on view through May 11.

At the Amon Carter Museum, visitors learn about this country’s fascinating social and cultural history through great works of American art.