Amon Carter Museum Blog

Museum Blogs and a Walk Down Memory Lane

Jana H. — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 15:46:33 -0500

ACM blogger Nora pointed out this article about museum blogging (and nod to the Carter blog) on the very descriptively titled Art Blog by Bob. Don’t let the name fool you, it’s actually a great little blog with all kinds of art (Caravaggio and Rothko on the first page alone) and some amusing little polls (modern actress most likely to fit the Pre-Raphaelite aesthetic, spookiest painting, etc). I’ve added it to the ol’ RSS reader.

With all this talk about our website and blog, I thought it might be fun to go to the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine and look at some past milestones on our website:

1997 – First incarnation of the website in the early-ish days of the internet

1998 - Building expansion announced

2000 - Second version of the website

ca. 2006 - The current site

Go mining through the history of other websites, museum and otherwise at archive.org. Guaranteed to amaze.

Carter Collections - Comings and Goings

Jana H. — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 15:59:46 -0500

It’s shaping up to be a very busy month at the Carter –

Revisualizing Westward Expansion: A Century of Conflict, 1800-1900, a.k.a. “the UTA maps show” closes next week. Make your way upstairs to see these gigantic maps from the Virginia Garrett Cartographic History Library at the University of Texas at Arlington before it’s too late.

The Charles M. Russell paintings Smoke of a .45 and Lost in a Snowstorm-We Are Friends are back from Los Angeles, where they were included in the Autry National Center’s exhibition, Cowboys and Presidents. Smoke of a .45 (below) is now back on view in the Carter’s mezzanine galleries.

The traveling exhibition Julian Onderdonk: Bluebonnets and Beyond, which includes the Carter’s painting, A Cloudy Day, Bluebonnets near San Antonio, Texas, is at the Witte Museum in San Antonio through January (more here and a video here).
Four of the Carter’s photographs of Georgia O’Keeffe and her house by Eliot Porter and Laura Gilpin are on view at the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum in Santa Fe through February (more here).

Post-Ike Museum Roundup

Jana H. — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 17:01:39 -0500

If you’re wondering how museums and historic houses in the Texas gulf coast weathered Hurricane Ike, check out this list compiled by the Texas Association of Museums. While there were some serious losses, it appears that a great majority of the area museums survived the storm without structural damage and some Houston museums have even re-opened.

Gohlke at CCP

Jana H. — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 11:47:54 -0500

Remember this?

The Carter’s traveling exhibition, Accommodating Nature: The Photographs of Frank Gohlke, opens tomorrow at its third venue, the Center for Creative Photography in Tucson, Arizona. If you’re not familiar with the CCP, it’s a large photography research center that is part of the University of Arizona. CCP holds the archives of around 50 major photographers, including Ansel Adams and Edward Weston. The exhibition will be in Tucson until early November, after which it will travel to its fourth and final venue, the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington DC.

Focus on Photographs: Generations

Jana H. — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 15:59:28 -0500

Come by and check out our new small exhibition, Focus on Photographs: Generations, which draws heavily from the Carter’s archives of Karl Struss, Laura Gilpin, and Carlotta Corpron as well as recent photography acquisitions. The works are all from the first half of the 20th century, and illustrate two very different directions in photography of the period. Here are some of my favorites:

Karl Struss, Housetops, Winter, 1915

Carlotta Corpron, Light Follows Form, 1946

Ida Lansky, Etude, ca. 1957-1959 (New acquisition!)

Focus on Photographs: Generations is up until February 2009.

Art Law in Santa Fe

Jana H. — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 11:56:17 -0500

Last month I had the very exciting opportunity to study art law in Santa Fe with students and professors from the Texas Wesleyan University School of Law. As someone – not in the class! – asked me in disbelief, there are laws that govern art?! Of course there are. Copyright, property law, constitutional law, international law, and tax law all affect the art world (not to mention my job).

Besides studying hundreds of years of case law, the class also took several class-related field trips in the Santa Fe area. First we visited Shidoni bronze foundry in nearby Tesuque, New Mexico (an area you may recognize from the photographs of Eliot Porter). Our next field trip was a behind-the-scenes tour of the Santa Fe Opera. In addition to seeing wigs, costumes, and sets being made for this season’s performances, we also learned about the opera’s legal issues with securing visas for international performers and performance rights for the operas themselves. The opera is on a hill several miles north of Santa Fe and the view is spectacular.

Our next trip was to Ghost Ranch, the site of Georgia O’Keeffe’s longtime home north of Abiquiu. Because we were a law school group our tour guide gave us the scoop on the legal issues surrounding O’Keeffe’s estate, which has been the subject of controversy since her death in 1986. Juicy lawsuits aside, I loved the landscape around Ghost Ranch and see why O’Keeffe chose to make it her home for so many years.

Looking back toward Ghost Ranch

This reminds me of a Hartley painting currently on view at the Carter…

We were also given time to explore Santa Fe on our own time. Besides hitting up all the museums, galleries, and shops, I also took the opportunity to track down the shop on the Santa Fe plaza that invented the Frito pie (I consider it a pilgrimage) and still serves it in the chip bag.

My last day was spent at the International Folk Art Festival, where artisans from all over the world had brought their works to sell. There were also all kinds of food and performances.

So long story short, it was a fantastic trip where I learned and experienced more than I can possibly blog about. I gained a couple of pounds, but I’d like to think that was from my brain growing and not from all the chile-eating! And I’ll end on this calming view from the last night of my trip, the sunset from above the city.

Photography in the Long Term

Jana H. — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 14:45:27 -0500

Here at the Carter we have about 40,000 photographs in our permanent collection, and we take every precaution to make them have the longest lifespan possible. Every time we view, research, move, exhibit, or reproduce a photograph, it is done with preservation in mind. That’s why I perked up when I saw Tyler Green’s link to an item about Canadian photographer Edward Burtynsky’s plan to print a photograph that would last ten thousand years.

Burtynsky is partnering with the Long Now Foundation, a group which promotes thinking in the looong term - they even record years with five digits, e.g., 02008. I was lucky enough to see the director of the Long Now Foundation speak at a Museum Computer Network conference a few years back. Interesting stuff for those of us who deal on daily basis with preservation of physical and digital media. Bonus: former glam-rocker and total renaissance man Brian Eno is on their board of directors.

I really do hope that Burtynsky’s process is a success, but even if it fails, he won’t be around to hear about it. Perhaps that is the real benefit of thinking in the very long term.

Last Chance for Autochromes

Jana H. — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 10:40:17 -0500

This weekend is your last chance to see 100 Years of Autochrome, our exhibition celebrating the invention of this early color photographic medium in 1907. It’s a great little show with autochromes (aka “additive color screen plates”) displayed in lightboxes and a video explaining the process.

Laura Gilpin, [Basket of peaches], ca. 1908-1916

100 Years of Autochrome is on view at the Carter until Sunday, July 27.

In the Eye of the Beholder

Jana H. — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 10:21:20 -0500

I read Michelangelo Was One Homely Dude over at the KERA Art&Seek blog and inspired me to post about the self-portraits in our own collection. Coincedentally, a good number of them are installed in our galleries right now.

Some highlights of the self portraits currently on view at the Carter (it’s your call whether they’re lookers or not).

Charles M. Russell, Charlie Himself, ca. 1915
Has anyone else noticed the striking resemblance to the Tommy Lee Jones billboards plastered all over Ft. Worth right now??

Nell Dorr, [Self-portrait in front of mural], ca. 1940
When in doubt, move around and don’t face the camera.

Clara Sipprell, [Clara in a blue dress], ca. 1910
This is a really cool autochrome that will only be up for a few more days! See it while you can because these are rarely on view.

Trapped in ABQ: Summer Reading

Jana H. — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 11:32:14 -0500

So what do you do when you’re trapped at the Albuquerque airport with nothing to do but count how many times your flight is delayed? You bury your nose in a copy of Full Bloom: The Art and Life of Georgia O’Keeffe and hope for the best. I probably wouldn’t have sought out this book if I weren’t hostage in an airport with one newsstand, but I’m about 200 pages into it with no regrets and would recommend it to anyone interested in Georgia O’Keeffe. Only recently have I really become a fan of her work, but after a week in Santa Fe (and Abiquiu, and Ghost Ranch - more on that later) I’ve become interested in her biography as well. You can’t deny that she led a remarkable life, knew fascinating people, and accomplished far more than most women of her generation.

And in case you’re wondering, the Carter has in its permanent collection 12 works by O’Keeffe and 130 photographs of O’Keeffe or her studio, four of which are currently on view at the Portland Museum of Art.

Laura Gilpin, Georgia O’Keeffe, 1953