Nuclear Fallout and the Avant Garde
I love reading about the intersection of science and art, and especially cases where science can tell us more about the history of a particular work. The Art Newspaper ran this fascinating and somewhat disturbing story last week about authenticating oil paintings based on the presence of isotopes resulting from nuclear explosions.
According to the article, this method was created specifically do authenticate Russian paintings from 1900-1930, for which there is a huge market in forgeries.
Apparently flax plants, whose oil is the binder for most paints, absorb the isotopes, which are then detectable in any works created with that paint. Therefore, works created before 1945 do not contain the isotopes, and those created afterward do. If the isotopes are detected in a work supposedly created before World War II, it is definitely a fake.
Monday Links
On the radar today, Marsden Hartley and the West: The Search for an American Modernism on the KERA Art&Seek blog and Frederic Remington’s Ridden Down (below) in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.
Tasha Tudor
We learned this morning that Tasha Tudor, a close friend of the photographer
Nell Dorr (1895-1988), died yesterday at the age of 92. Known for her children’s book illustrations and commitment to a 19th-century lifestyle, Tudor can be seen in two photographs currently on view in our exhibition, Nell Dorr: From Everlasting to Everlasting.
Nell Dorr, [Tasha Tudor hanging clothes], ca. 1940
Nell Dorr, Tasha at Dulcimer, ca. 1940
Tasha Tudor’s obituaries can be read in the New York Times, LA Times, and Washington Post; many of her charming illustrations can be seen here and here.
In Case of Emergency
With all the reports of flooding in the Midwest, this might be a good time to point out that the Carter (and indeed, most museums in the U.S.), have very detailed disaster plans in place. If you’ve ever been “lucky” enough to be visiting the Carter when tornadoes brewed in the area, you’ve seen our disaster planning in action as you were whisked off to huddle in the basement with museum staff.
We also take the safety of our collections very seriously. We have plans for what to do with the artworks in the case of natural or man-made disasters, and how to clean up after the fact. Professional organizations like the American Association of Museums and the Texas Association of Museums also provide resources for disaster recovery.
The fact that institutions like the Cedar Rapids Museum of Art have saved most of their collection (see the comments in the post below for an update from their director, Terri Pitts) even in extreme circumstances stands as a testament to the exhaustive planning and professionalism of their museum staff. It also serves as a reminder why we spend so much time preparing for the worst case scenario. The fact is it could happen any time.
Hartley Roundup
Coverage for Marsden Hartley and the West: The Search for an American Modernism, currently on view in the Carter’s special exhibition galleries:
Porter, Gilpin, and O'Keeffe, now in Portland
Photos from two of the Carter’s largest artists’ archives are now on view at the Portland Museum of Art (Portland, Maine, that is) in the exhibition Georgia O’Keeffe and the Camera: The Art of Identity.
Both Laura Gilpin and Eliot Porter spent time with O’Keeffe at her home in Abiquiu, New Mexico in the 1940s-1960s and the Carter’s photography collection contains several examples from both artists. The following four photos will be on view at the Portland Museum of Art through September 7:
Eliot Porter, Georgia O’Keeffe’s Entrance Door (Outside), Abiquiu, New Mexico, October 8, 1949
Eliot Porter, Horse Skull, O’Keeffe’s House, Abiquiu, New Mexico, August 5, 1952
Laura Gilpin, Georgia O’Keeffe, 1953
Laura Gilpin, Studio of Georgia O’Keeffe Overlooking Chama Valley, ca. 1960
Where in the World is Red Cannas?
If you’ve been in our painting and sculpture galleries lately, you may have noticed the conspicuous absence of a favorite work in our collection, Georgia O’Keeffe’s Red Cannas.
The painting is part of the exhibition Georgia O’Keeffe and the Women of the Stieglitz Circle, which started at the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum in Santa Fe, and traveled to the High Museum of Art in Atlanta. The show has gone to its final venue, the San Diego Museum of Art, where Red Cannas will be on display until September.
Dash for the Timber - It's Everywhere
Following up on Katherine’s post where she discovered a copy of everyone’s favorite painting at a restaurant in Alpine, Texas…
Fran Flavin, former UT-Dallas professor and friend of the Carter, sends us this pic all the way from Washington D.C. He went out for Mexican food with friends and found this copy of A Dash for the Timber across the restaurant wall!
Special thanks to Fran for sharing this with us. Of course, you can see the real thing anytime in the Carter’s main gallery!
Behind the Scenes: Nell Dorr
Nell Dorr: Everlasting to Everlasting [and previously] is being installed in our photography galleries right now. I thought I would give you a little glimpse behind the scenes of this exhibition before it opens May 17.
Here is the installation in progress. The hard part is done: the photographs have been selected for the show, their condition checked, matted, framed, and hung on the wall. It looks like a mess, but all that’s left is attaching the labels and applying the vinyl graphics to the title wall (and some cleanup of course):
Where do the wall graphics come from? The large image of hibiscus seen here is a blown-up copy of a Nell Dorr photo in our collection. Our exhibition designer, Trang, prints the copy on a large printer in her office:
And here is a peek at what the final design will look like, minus the sunglasses and vitamin water:
Nell Dorr: Everlasting to Everlasting opens this Saturday…
Filling the Void
The scent of spackle is in the air! With the Snapshot show packed up and sent home, the photography galleries are being reconfigured and repainted for two new shows featuring works from the Carter’s enormous permanent collection of photography.
On May 10, a new rotation of Masterworks of American Photography will go up. Of the twenty-some-odd works in the show, only two have ever been exhibited here before. Many of the photographs are new to the Carter, acquired (and cataloged by your truly) just in the past year. Three of these new photography acquisitions are quite large; one measures 6 x 8 feet!
Nell Dorr: From Everlasting to Everlasting opens on May 17 in the gallery adjacent to Masterworks. Dorr was a photographer who focused on family life, but she also shot many portraits and experimented with photograms. The Carter holds Dorr’s archive of over 5800 works, and this is the first time we’ve done a survey of her work.
I love photograms, so I was happy to find one in this show that I had never seen before:
Nell Dorr, [Light abstraction photogram], ca. 1950s-1960s
A Year of Blogging
Yesterday marked my one-year blogiversary! (The Carter blog started in January 2007 but I didn’t make my debut until April.) Since I started contributing to the blog, a lot of things have been happening around here. The museum closed in May for repairs to the fire protection system and major gallery redesigns, I celebrated five years at the Carter in June, and we reopened to the public with a big cookout on the plaza in August. In the year since I started blogging, we have completely redesigned the layout of the permanent collection, installed (and deinstalled) 16 exhibitions, added 64 works to the permanent collection, and added 3 more Carter bloggers. Here’s to a busy year and many more!
Bror Utter, Marine Creek Bridge, acquired in 2007 and currently on view
Last Chance for Two Carter Exhibitions
This Sunday, April 27, is your last chance to see The Art of the American Snapshot, now on view in our photography galleries. The snapshots are from a private collection and the Carter is the final venue for the show, so Sunday will probably be your last chance ever to see these photographs.
Sunday is also the last day for Chimneys and Towers: Demuth’s Late Paintings of Lancaster, now on view at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York. Organized by the Carter, the exhibition also traveled to the Norton Museum of Art in Florida. After Sunday, however, the show will be taken down and the works returned to their owners.
If you can’t make it to New York on such notice, come by and check out the snapshot exhibition before it’s too late!
Museums and blogs
Tyler Green’s post on Modern Art Notes this morning prompted me to write a post on the museum blogs that I read, which I have been meaning to do for a while. Truth be told, I keep up with more blogs that are museum-related or about local arts than blogs produced by the museums themselves. Hope you like them.
Blogs by and about other museums:
Eye Level - Smithsonian American Art Museum blog
Brooklyn Museum blog
Modern Blog - MAMFW
Library of Congress blog
CultureGrrl
Modern Art Notes
Museum issues (or at least the ones I deal with):
Fresh + New(er) - Powerhouse Museum (Australia) technology blog
Musematic technology blog
Digitzation 101 technology blog
Collectanea copyright blog
Adventures in Collection Management
Local arts blogs:
KERA Arts +Culture blog
West and Clear Fort Worth events blog
Fort Worth Weekly blog
Are there any good ones that I’ve missed? Post your recommendations in comments.
Russell in L.A.
Two favorite Charles Russell paintings from the Carter’s collection are now on view at the Autry National Center in Los Angeles.
Lost in a Snowstorm – We Are Friends and Smoke of a .45 are both included in the Cowboys and Presidents exhibition through September 7.
Now if you haven’t been to the Autry, it’s different. I visited last year and really enjoyed my time there. Founded by native Texan Gene Autry (from Tioga, about an hour north of Fort Worth), the museum has a sizable collection of western art and western movie memorabilia. They have the Lone Ranger’s blue flannel getup and – get this, fellow children of the 80s – the costumes from The Three Amigos. If you’re going to be in LA this summer, don’t miss out on the Autry and this exhibition.
Spring Cleaning
It’s that time of year again…time to clean ayear’s worth of grit, grime, and grackles off the Henry Moore sculptures, Upright Motives No. 1, 2, and 7, in the Carter’s plaza. Caring for outdoor sculpture is never easy, but Fort Worth’s extreme weather doesn’t exactly help.
Every spring Carter staff install scaffolding around the Moores at the east end of the plaza. Preparators Steve, Greg, and Les are working on the sculptures this week because the weather is warm (but not too warm!) and dry.
The sculptures are gently cleansed with a mild soap and water, rinsed, and left to dry overnight.
The preparators continue the process the next day. Here, Les applies a specially formulated wax with a daubing brush. He works only in small areas at a time and wipes up any excess wax with a soft cloth. Spring is a good time for waxing bronzes because hot weather makes the wax melt too fast to apply properly.
Greg buffs the wax with a flat brush, making sure it is applied evenly over the sculpture’s rough surface. The wax is formulated to protect the sculpture’s patina from the hot Texas sun, pollution, and storms. During the cleaning process, the preparators also examine the sculpture’s surface for any conservation issues that might have developed since the last examination.
Thanks to Steve for taking pics from atop the scaffolding!
Back to the basement until next year…
Onderdonk Bluebonnets on KERA's "Think"
KERA’s Think program this week featured the Julian Onderdonk exhibition currently up at the Dallas Museum of Art. Our own Onderdonk, A Cloudy Day, Bluebonnets near San Antonio, Texas is in the show, which will be in Dallas until it heads to Witte Museum this summer.
Gohlke in Andover and a New Website Feature
Our traveling exhibition, Accommodating Nature: The Photographs of Frank Gohlke opens tomorrow at the Addison Gallery of American Art in Andover, Massachusetts. It will be up until the Addison closes this summer for a major building project.
(Apropos of this week’s weather in DFW!)
Frank Gohlke, Aftermath: The Wichita Falls Tornado, 4503 McNeil, looking north, April 14, 1979
©1979 Frank Gohlke
And while we’re on the subject, you might have noticed a new(ish) feature on the traveling exhibitions page of our website. Beside the title of the exhibition there is now a link to “View other venues,” which lists the exhibition’s forthcoming venues, with dates, addresses, and - even better - links to Google maps of the venue locations. You can see Gohlke’s “other venues” page here.
Dave Hickey on KERA's "Think"
In case you missed Dave Hickey’s talk on the Fort Worth Circle at the Carter a couple of weeks ago, here is another (shorter, cleaner!) version on KERA’s Think program. (Via the KERA Arts & Culture blog.)
Tyler Green Features the Carter, Part 4
In the fourth and final installment of Modern Arts Notes’ coverage of Intimate Modernism Tyler Green talks about the art world at the time and its influence on the Fort Worth Circle artists, notably with a George Grammer painting (which happens to be a staff favorite in the show) that Green compares to the works of Paul Klee. The Fort Worth Circle are most often discussed in the context of being local artists, but it’s been interesting to learn more about their place in a much larger modern art scene. Definitely worth a read.
Tyler Green Features the Carter, Parts 2 and 3
As promised on Monday, Tyler Green has continued his essay on our exhibition, Intimate Modernism: Fort Worth Circle Artists in the 1940s on the Modern Art Notes blog. Part one introduced the show; parts two & three (posted this morning) focus on the works of Kelly Fearing, one of the last living artists from the Fort Worth Circle.
Tyler Green features the Carter ALL WEEK!
After our big Dave Hickey talk on Saturday, we’ve had our second brush with fame in just 48 hours. Imagine my surprise this morning when I surfed over to see what Tyler Green had to say and read that our exhibition, Intimate Modernism: Fort Worth Circle Artists in the 1940s, will be featured on Modern Art Notes ALL WEEK! Tyler praises the Carter for exhibiting pre-1960 modernist works, which apparently have been eschewed by many art museums in favor of all things post-modern or post-post-modern or wherever we are now.
Stay tuned…!
Bluemner the Architect
Sometimes I’ll read an article about an artist in our collection and feel a little twinge of guilt that I didn’t know more about their life. Case in point: I was catching up on my art blogs over the weekend when I saw this post on ArtsJournal’s CultureGrrl blog about Oscar Bluemner, a 20th century painter who also designed a courthouse in the Bronx. I was in the Bronx just a while ago and had no idea that I was so close to the building described as Bluemner’s “meisterwerk.”
We have one of Bluemner’s “vibrant Expressionist landscapes” right here at the Carter. Like most of his landscapes it features architectural elements, which take on far more significance after reading about his troubled life and career.
Oscar Bluemner, Blue Day, 1930
Onderdonk at the DMA
Seeing the bluebonnets on I-30 this morning reminded me - our Julian Onderdonk painting, A Cloudy Day, Bluebonnets near San Antonio, Texas is now on view at the Dallas Museum of Art as part of their exhibition, Bluebonnets and Beyond: Julian Onderdonk, American Impressionist, through July 20.
From the DMA, the exhibition will travel to a couple of other Texas art museums: the Witte Museum in San Antonio and the Stark Museum in Orange (near Beaumont).
Dave Hickey at the Carter
The KERA Arts & Culture blog beat me to it, but Dave Hickey is coming to the Carter. Yes, that Dave Hickey, possibly the only famous art critic Texas has ever produced. He’s the author of Air Guitar, a professor at UNLV, and a VERY quick wit.
I was lucky enough to see Hickey give a talk at the Modern several years ago and he was pretty great - informative, irreverent, and FUNNY. Don’t miss out - Saturday, March 29, 11am. Reserve your seat at 817.989.5057.
Aw Shucks (Revisited)
Once again Tyler Green from ArtsJournal’s Modern Art Notes blog has some very nice things to say about us, specifically a post from a couple of weeks ago about the Carter’s works currently out on loan. I feel so popular! Thanks Tyler!
More Fort Worth Circle Video
Local PBS station KERA has already done a video on the art of the Fort Worth Circle, and now our friends at the West and Clear Blog have posted a video about the artists of the Fort Worth Circle and our exhibition, Intimate Modernism: Fort Worth Circle Artists in the 1940s. Historian Scott Barker and our very own Jane Myers make appearances.
Where Are They Now, Part II
So you may have noticed that I am really into Google Maps. It’s such a smart tool - in under ten minutes I was able to locate every building in Bror Utter’s architectural watercolors series that is still standing. I’ve lived in or near Fort Worth all my life, and I had a lot of “Oh, THAT building!” moments when I found these landmarks on a map. And better yet, I’ve been inside a few of these too.
Most of these are really easy to find and you pass by (or over!) them all the time. Without any further ado:
Knights of Pythias Castle Hall
Marine Creek Bridge [note: in this shot you are actually standing ON the bridge - it isn’t visible from any streets]
Where Are They Now?
Nice little post today over at the KERA Arts & Culture blog about Bror Utter’s watercolor, Land Title Block, and how the building pictured is now home to the Flying Saucer. Who knew! I catalogued the work just a few months ago, but had no idea the building was still standing, much less one I’ve actually been in. This is what the building looks like now, so slow down and take a look the next time you’re downtown. If you’d like to play where-are-they-now with the buildings in the other Bror Utter watercolors, make your reservation for Quentin McGown’s talk at the Carter this Saturday.
Bror Utter, Land Title Block, 1957.
ACM in the NYT
I was just catching up on my internetting this morning when I came across this review of the Carter’s exhibition, Chimneys and Towers: Charles Demuth’s Late Paintings of Lancaster in the New York Times. The show on view at the Whitney Museum of American Art through April 27. One of our Demuth watercolors, Cineraria, is also featured in the article. It’s a good read and an interesting insight into Demuth’s life (I had no idea he was so chummy with Marcel Duchamp) - definitely worth checking out.
The West Heads East
If you happen to be embarking on any travel to Georgia, New York, Massachusetts, or France, you just might see paintings from the Carter on your trip. We have several individual works and an entire exhibition currently traveling.
First up, Red Cannas (above), one of our most popular Georgia O’Keeffe paintings, is on display at the High Museum of Art in Atlanta as part of the exhibition Georgia O’Keeffe and the Women of the Stieglitz Circle.
We also have paintings by Remington and Russell in the exhibition The Mythology of the West, now in Rennes, France. (You can read another blog post about this show here).
Remington’s An Indian Trapper (above) is on view at the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, Massachusetts as part of the exhibition Remington Looking West.
And finally, the Carter’s own exhibition, Chimneys and Towers: Charles Demuth’s Late Paintings of Lancaster, is now installed at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York. This is the show’s last venue and your last chance to see these works shown together.
Happy travels!