Blogs and Podcasts

With the immediacy of camera phones that send multimedia messages and post photos directly to Flickr and Facebook, it’s easy to take digital images for granted these days. When you see images of artworks on a museum’s website, you don’t necessarily think about all the work that went into getting that image (and the accompanying metadata) out there for you to see.

We’ve just passed the halfway point in our NEA grant-funded works on paper digitization project and have thousands of images to show for all of our hard work, which is remarkable because each artwork must be very carefully moved out of storage, shot by the Carter’s photography assistant, and returned to storage. The images are processed and metadata is embedded in each file…and all of this happens after the works have been thoroughly cataloged and measured.

Our photography assistant, Rachel, has been trained to handle artworks and makes the day-to-day decisions about the best ways to shoot works on paper whose medium, dimensions, and other needs vary widely across the collection.

Here, Rachel is shooting a Civil War mezzotint from the Carter’s prints collection. She’s using a special camera and studio setup for larger objects in the collection.

And here is the fruit of her labor, an accurate reproduction of the print. Not only will this image end up on the Carter’s website, it will also be used internally by staff from several departments and made available for educational programs and museum publications.

John Sartain (1808-1897), after Peter Rothermel (1812 or 1817-1895), The Battle of Gettysburg: Pickett’s Charge, mezzotint, 1872, Gift of Edward L. Mattil

This Week in the Arts has posted a great podcast interview with Elizabeth Kornhauser, curator of the exhibition American Moderns on Paper: Masterworks from the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, which is now open at the Carter. She provides a lot of great background information about the artists in the show, how exhibitions are organized, and why these works are rarely seen by the public.

American Moderns on Paper: Masterworks from the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art will be on view in the Carter’s special exhibition galleries February 27-May 30, after which it travels to the Portland Museum of Art in Maine and back home to the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford, Connecticut.

Edited to add: you can also read a great review of this exhibition in the Star-Telegram.

Today is Texas Independence Day, which celebrates the signing of Texas’s declaration of independence from Mexico on March 2, 1836. While a convention was gathered in Washington-on-the-Brazos to write the declaration of independence, the two-week long Battle of the Alamo was taking place in San Antonio. Although the battle was a victory for Mexico, it rallied a tremendous amount of support for the Texian army and “Remember the Alamo!” became its battle cry.

This week we have two images of the Alamo, created a century apart. You’ll notice the Alamo building, which was partially demolished after the battle, is in really bad shape in the drawing by Edward Everett, who came to Texas in the 1840s to fight in the U.S.-Mexican War. It was then renovated by the time Laura Gilpin took the photo below, a hundred years later.

Edward Everett (1818-1903), Ruins of the Church of the Alamo, San Antonio de Béxar, transparent and opaque watercolor and ink on paper, 1847
Gift of Mrs. Anne Burnett Tandy in memory of her father Thomas Lloyd Burnett, 1870-1938

Laura Gilpin (1891-1979), The Alamo, Source of Texas History, gelatin silver print, 1947
© 1979 Amon Carter Museum, Bequest of the artist

Since George Washington died several years before the first photograph was taken, we obviously have no photographic images of our first president. But here we have the next best thing: a unique portrait in a medium we here in Fort Worth have become rather familiar with lately.

Unknown artist, Geo. Washington 12/10/13, autochrome, 1913

This past Monday marked the 50th anniversary of the Greensboro sit-ins and the opening of the new International Civil Rights Center & Museum at the site of the sit-ins, a former Woolworth’s in downtown Greensboro.

The Greensboro sit-ins quickly launched similar non-violent protests across North Carolina and a number of student civil rights groups, including the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. SNCC, whose first leader was future Washington D.C. mayor Marion Berry, organized voter registration drives all over the rural South and played an important role in the 1963 March on Washington, where Martin Luther King Jr’s “I Have a Dream” speech was delivered.

This photograph shows SNCC members training to respond to the physical dangers of their work. The photographer, James Karales, was a photojournalist originally from Ohio who worked for Look magazine and shot many key events in the Civil Rights Movement.

James Karales (1930-2002), Passive Resistance Training, SNCC, gelatin silver print, 1960, ©2002 Monica Karales

Last spring, the Carter was awarded a $50,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Arts to catalog and digitize the entire works on paper collection, which is comprised of over 7000 drawings, watercolors, and prints of all kinds. We are well into the project now, and ready to start sharing some of the great stuff that we’ve been working with all year.

I’m kicking off this series of blog posts with a group of some of the oldest prints in the Carter’s collection. You’ll notice that these are unusually whimsical images, most likely drawn by Europeans who had not seen the American bison (or his friend, the deer) in person.

Johann Rudolf Holzhalb (Swiss, 1723-1806), Americanischer Aur-Ochs. Bos Bison, etching, ca. 1790

Unknown artist, The American Bison. The Cape Buffalo., engraving with applied watercolor, 1799

Bramati and Raineri, [Bison], aquatint and etching with applied watercolor, ca. 1753-1825
So this buffalo looks pretty normal, but check out that deer’s antlers!

Unknown artist, Lopez Yucati and the Bison. (North America), lithograph with applied watercolor, ca. 1830-1860

Unknown artist, Buffle., lithograph with applied watercolor, ca. 1820-1850

Our Photo of the Week is drawn from the Carter’s collection of over 100 works by 19th century photographer Carleton Watkins. This albumen silver print, Commencement of the Whitney Glacier, Summit of Mt. Shasta, is currently on loan to the Turtle Bay Exploration Park in Redding, California, for their exhibition The Art of Mount Shasta.

Carleton Watkins (1829-1916), Commencement of the Whitney Glacier, Summit of Mt. Shasta, 1870, albumen silver print ca. 1876

The Whitney Glacier is one of seven glaciers found on Mount Shasta, which is located in northern California near the Oregon border. While 90% of the world’s glacier’s are shrinking, the Whitney Glacier is of special interest today because it is one of very few glaciers in the world actually growing as a result of global warming. Apparently warming of the Pacific Ocean has caused increased snowfall in northern California, accounting for 30% growth of the Whitney Glacier in the past 50 years.

Commencement of the Whitney Glacier, Summit of Mt. Shasta is on view at Turtle Bay Exploration Park through May 3, 2010.

I saw the city bus decorated with the Carter’s painting, Wrapped Oranges again this morning on my way to work. I snapped a quick shot of it with my phone as it came through the Camp Bowie/Montgomery intersection right by the museum:

If you’ve driven anywhere near the Cultural District lately, you’ve probably noticed that midway rides and legions of horse trailers have once again descended upon Fort Worth for the Stock Show, which opens this Friday. This week I’m sharing a few historical Stock Show photographs from the Carter’s Erwin E. Smith archive. These images date back to the mid-1920s, when the Stock Show was still held in the stockyards and the world’s first indoor rodeo was held in the arena now known as Cowtown Coliseum (the event was moved to the west side of town in the 1940s).

Erwin E. Smith, A group of rodeo officials standing in front of the General Offices of the Southwestern Exposition and Fat Stock Show in Fort Worth, Texas, 1925-1940, gelatin dry plate negative, Erwin E. Smith Collection of the Library of Congress on Deposit at the Amon Carter Museum, Fort Worth, Texas

Erwin E. Smith, [Rodeo grand entry, Southwestern Exposition and Fat Stock Show Rodeo, Fort Worth, Texas], glass plate negative, ca. 1925-1926, Bequest of Mary Alice Pettis

Erwin E. Smith, Southwestern Exposition and Fat Stock Show Rodeo, Fort Worth, Texas, glass plate negative, ca. 1925-1926, Bequest of Mary Alice Pettis

Erwin E. Smith, Riding a tough one, [Southwestern Exposition and Fat Stock Show Rodeo, Fort Worth, Texas] , gelatin dry plate negative, ca. 1925-1926, Erwin E. Smith Collection of the Library of Congress on Deposit at the Amon Carter Museum, Fort Worth, Texas

Erwin E. Smith, A rodeo performer throwing a loop over a horse and rider as they race by him, [Southwestern Exposition and Fat Stock Show Rodeo, Fort Worth, Texas] , gelatin dry plate negative. ca. 1925-1926, Erwin E. Smith Collection of the Library of Congress on Deposit at the Amon Carter Museum, Fort Worth, Texas

Over the past several months, you may have noticed that the Carter’s building and grounds undergoing maintenance in preparation for the museum’s 50th anniversary next year. All the activity going on around the building inspired this week’s post, which draws from the Carter’s collection of construction photographs by Charles Rivers (1904-1993).

Born in Greece, Rivers was a construction worker, union organizer, political activist, and photographer, who also worked on the construction of both the Empire State Building and Chrysler Building 1929-1930. Rivers led an incredibly full and varied life, and a full bio is available from NYU, which holds his personal archive.

Charles Rivers, Shadow of the Chrysler over the Graybar Building while a Load of Steel is Being Relayed from Derrick to Derrick to Reach the Floor where It is to Be Erected into Place, gelatin silver print, 1929, Gift of the artist, © Charles Rivers

Charles Rivers, Repairing the Derrick on the Chrysler Building, gelatin silver print, 1929, Gift of the artist, © Charles Rivers

Charles Rivers, The Bolter Up — Empire State Building [Self-portrait], gelatin silver print, 1930, Gift of the artist, © Charles Rivers