Fort Worth, TX, March 25, 2013—The Amon Carter Museum of American Art announces today upcoming spring and summer exhibitions. Visitors can experience an array of exhibitions, including the special exhibition Romare Bearden: A Black Odyssey. Other exhibitions on view include works by nationally-recognized Texas artists, lithographs of American Indians by Leonard Baskin,and an in-depth, mixed-media show exploring American identity. Admission is free to all exhibitions.

Special Exhibition

Romare Bearden: A Black Odyssey

May 18–August 11, 2013
In 1977, African-American artist Romare Bearden (1912–1988) created a landmark series of collages and watercolors based on Homer’s classic work of Western literature The Odyssey.

Through the approximately 50 works of art, Bearden recasts Homer’s celebrated heroes and villains as black people, transforming the epic poem into a poignantly universal story. As the artist stated, “All of us are on a kind of odyssey. And I think this is what makes the story so lasting, so classic, and applicable to everyone.”

Romare Bearden: A Black Odyssey is organized by the Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service in cooperation with the Romare Bearden Foundation and Estate and DC Moore Gallery. The exhibition and its related educational resources are supported by a grant from the Stavros Niarchos Foundation. The Fort Worth presentation is supported in part by Bates Container, the Garvey Texas Foundation and AZZ incorporated.

Also on View

Texas Regionalism

April 30, 2013–April 20, 2014
This installation of Texas paintings captures a pivotal moment in the state’s cultural history. In the 1930s, a group of young artists—including Jerry Bywaters, Alexandre Hogue, William Lester, Thomas Stell, Harry Carnohan, and Coreen Spellman, among others—gained national recognition for their scenic and ideological interpretations of the local environment. Although they depicted the people and landscapes of Texas in identifiable and representational manners, each artist possessed their own style, often combining realism with modernist influences ranging from Cubism to Surrealism. These evocative paintings provide a poignant glimpse of life and art in Texas during the era of the Great Depression.

Sedrick Huckaby’s Hidden in Plain Site

May 14–October 31, 2013
In conjunction with the exhibition Romare Bearden: A Black Odyssey, the Amon Carter will display a work by Fort Worth artist Sedrick Huckaby (b. 1975), who credits Bearden as an important influence.

Huckaby’s 18-by-14-foot oil painting Hidden in Plain Site (2011) addresses the notion that some quilts contain an encoded language and reveal a secret message. Historical accounts and narratives tell how slaves would guide fellow runaway slaves to freedom using quilts with hidden directions, maps, and so forth. To do the same thing within the context of today’s cultural customs would be to talk about spiritual slavery rather than a physical one. Through the careful arrangement of four quilts, Huckaby establishes a variety of metaphors and symbols. A human brain, a city map, a cross, and a wedding celebration all offer a message of hope. What is the exact meaning? Every viewer should search for themselves to see what is “hidden in plain site.”

Leonard Baskin: Indian Portraits

June 22–September 1, 2013
In a distinguished career that spanned much of the 20th century, Leonard Baskin (1922–2000) became known for his accomplishments as a sculptor, printmaker, illustrator, book-artist, and teacher. Baskin’s wide-ranging intellect, fueled by an abiding sense of social justice and a deep respect for humanity, led to a practice of working thematically. Such was the case with a series of large-scale prints and drawings of American Indians, which he began in the late 1960s and returned to over the course of the next several decades.

Baskin’s conceptual framework, nourished by his admiration for American Indian life and culture, evolved as he researched the project. He took inspiration from Thomas Berger’s historical novel Little Big Man, published in 1964, as well as the activities of the American Indian Movement, founded in 1968. The photographic portraits of American Indians taken by Edward S. Curtis and Frank A. Rinehart also became a point of departure, encouraging Baskin to focus on the faces of his subjects. This exhibition, comprised of nearly 20 prints and drawings created between 1971 and 1974, includes Baskin’s prized images of Chief Gall, Crazy Horse, and Sitting Bull (whom he considered the real heroes of the legendary Battle of the Little Bighorn), in addition to striking images of well-known figures from the Arapaho, Assiniboine, Cheyenne, Crow, and Sioux nations.

We the People: Picturing American Identity

June 15–September 8, 2013
The notion of American identity has been debated, challenged, and questioned throughout the nation’s history. Who is American? Who represents this country’s identity? Who makes it what it is? These questions, old as the country itself and still relevant today, are the subject of this mixed-media exhibition of artworks from the late 18th through the late 20th centuries.

We the People is structured around key moments in history when the definition of a singular American identity was challenged and ultimately reshaped. Organized into four themes, the exhibition asks: Who Is America, Who Is the American Woman, Who Shapes America and Who Defines America?

June Wayne: The Tamarind Decade

July 23, 2013–January 19, 2014
June Wayne (1918–2011) was an accomplished and diverse artist who worked in a variety of media, including painting, tapestry design, and film. However, she is best known as a skilled printmaker and founder of the influential Tamarind Lithography Workshop (1960–70). Wayne was committed to reviving fine-art lithography, which had fallen out of favor in the United States as a legitimate artistic medium. With the support of the Ford Foundation, Wayne set up a workshop named after her own studio on Tamarind Avenue in Los Angeles, whose mission was to educate artists and printers alike in order to ensure the survival of the technique.

Her prints from the 1960s, the decade she oversaw Tamarind, show an intimate knowledge of the medium and its potential for technical exploration and varied abstract imagery. June Wayne: The Tamarind Decade features approximately 15 works created during her oversight of the Tamarind Lithography Workshop, including prints in various states or versions that communicate how the artist reworked themes in different iterations. This exhibition offers a glimpse into the work of the artist behind the influential workshop, whose vision ensured that the practice of lithography is alive and thriving today.