Fort Worth, TX, September 16, 2008—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.

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.

Public Programs

Admission is free.

Saturday, November 15, 11 a.m.
Lecture: Video Installations, 1975–2008
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, through 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.