Blogs and Podcasts

189 years ago today, ship captain and seal hunter Captain Nathaniel Palmer was the first American to see Antarctica. Surprisingly enough, he was only 21 years old at the time. The United States’ scientific research station in Antarctica, several natural landmarks, and two research vessels are all named in honor of Captain Palmer.

Photographer Eliot Porter visited Palmer Station in 1976. The following are some of his shots of the landscape surrounding Palmer Station, Antarctica.

Arthur’s Harbor, Palmer Station, Antarctica, January 1976, dye imbibition print

Arch Iceberg, Kristi Cove, Bonaparte Point, Palmer Station, Antarctic Peninsula, Antarctica, February 1976, dye imbibition print

Ice and Snowbank, Litchfield Island, Palmer Station, Antarctica, February 11, 1976, dye imbibition print

Iceberg and Evening Clouds, Palmer Station, Antarctica, February 21, 1976, dye imbibition print

I’m leaving for Portland bright and early tomorrow morning for a museum technology conference, so this installment of Photo of the Week shows two of the Carter’s 19th-century photographs of the Oregon landscape.

Frank Jay Haynes, Cascades of Columbia, albumen silver print, 1885

William Henry Jackson, Hercules’ Pillars, Columbia River, Oregon, albumen silver print, ca. 1892

Today’s installment of Photo of the Week is for all you armchair leaf peepers out there. The Carter’s collection contains way too many gorgeous fall photographs to include in a blog post, thanks to our massive archive of nature photographs by Eliot Porter and numerous works by his stylistic followers. These fall landscapes can range from the idyllic to the downright psychedelic…and that’s the end of the spectrum we’re looking at today. The following three photographs are all by Robert Glenn Ketchum, a landscape photographer strongly influenced by Eliot Porter (and the subject of the Carter’s 2006 exhibition, Robert Glenn Ketchum and the Legacy of Eliot Porter).

Brewster Boogie Woogie, 27, 1979, Gift of Advocacy Arts Foundation, ©1979 Robert Glenn Ketchum

Sun Dance, 1989, Gift of Advocacy Arts Foundation, ©1989 Robert Glenn Ketchum

Predawn Glow, Elk Point, 1978, Gift of Dr. and Mrs. John Uphold, © 1988 Robert Glenn Ketchum

Photographer Roy DeCarava died this week at age 89. DeCarava, whose body of work included famous portraits of jazz greats and subtle images of life in Harlem, was awarded the National Medal of Arts and was the first African American artist to receive a Guggenheim Fellowship. The Carter has four photographs by DeCarava in its collection, and you can see an extensive slide show of his works on the NYT Lens photography blog.

Obituaries:
New York Times
NPR (includes Fresh Air interview with DeCarava from 1996)
Time Magazine

Our Photo of the Week comes from the Carter’s Eliot Porter archive, which is 99.9% nature photography. Along with a handful of photos featuring urban scenes, the archive also contains this little gem from a trip Porter took to New York in 1979. And yes, I really wish I knew what was behind that wall!

Eliot Porter, New York City, November 1979, dye imbibition print
Bequest of the artist, ©1990 Amon Carter Museum

The Carter has loaned seven of its over three hundred works by Charles M. Russell to the artist’s first major retrospective exhibition since his death in 1926. The Masterworks of Charles M. Russell will be on view at the Denver Art Museum through January 10, 2010; from there it travels to the Gilcrease Museum in Tulsa and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. [Denver Post review of the exhibition here]

The Carter’s loan to the exhibition includes six paintings – The Silk Robe, The Buffalo Hunt [No. 39], The Medicine Man, In Without Knocking, A Tight Dally and a Loose Latigo, and Breaking Camp – and one sculpture, The Enemy’s Tracks.

Soon to come: photographs of delivery & installation of the Russell works in Denver!

Charles M. Russell, The Medicine Man, oil on canvas, 1908

Expanding Horizons: Painting and Landscape Photography of American and Canadian Landscape 1860-1918, an exhibition that includes two of the Carter’s photographs by Karl Struss and Frank Jay Haynes, has traveled to its second and final venue. The exhibition opens tomorrow at the Vancouver Art Gallery, where it will be on view through January 17.

With the happy outcome of yesterday’s newsmaking joyride, what better topic for Photo of the Week?

Here are three joyrides from the Carter’s photography collection…

Elliott Erwitt, Yale/New Haven, 1955, printed 1977, Gift of George Peterkin Jr., ©1955 Elliott Erwitt

Unknown artist, [Driving to Denver], gelatin silver print postcard, ca. 1910s

And one of my personal favorites:

Edward H. Mitchell, “The Joy Ride” at the California Alligator Farm, Los Angeles, California, halftone postcard with applied color, ca. 1910s

It’s Nobel Prize season again. Today’s installment of Photo of the Week draws on the Carter’s archive of photographer Clara Sipprell (1885-1975) who shot, among other things, portraits of famous diplomats and scientists. The following three photographs, all by Clara Sipprell, are portraits of Nobel Prize-winning scientists that I just happened to come across while doing some cataloging last week.

Professor Manne Siegbahn–Physics–Nobel Prize–Stockholm - 1938, gelatin silver print, 1938

Manne Siegbahn (1886-1978) was a Swedish scientist who won the 1924 Nobel Prize for Physics. Interestingly, his son won the Nobel for work in the same field - x-ray spectroscopy - in 1981.

Professor The Svedberg–Physical Chemistry–Nobel Prize–Uppsala, gelatin silver print, 1938

Theodor Svedberg (1884-1971) was also a Swedish scientist; he invented a high speed centrifuge and won the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1926.

Dr. Hideki Yukawa, Nobel Prize–Physics, gelatin silver print, ca. 1950s

Hideki Yukawa (1907-1981) was the first Japanese Nobel Prize laureate, who won the prize for his work with subatomic particles in 1949.

Irving Penn, one of the most famous American fashion and portrait photographers, has passed away at age 92 [NYT obituary]. His photograph of painter John Marin is on view through November 29 in the Carter’s exhibition Circle of Friends: Portraits of Artists.