February 18–May 28, 2006
Patterns of Progress: Bird's-Eye Views of Texas
Soar above the cities and towns of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Texas to catch a bird’s-eye view of one of the greatest periods of urban growth in Texas history.
More than sixty highly detailed and oversized prints in this special exhibition will offer a chronicle of one of the greatest periods of urban growth in Texas history. The images, which appear as something between a panorama and a map, were drawn from an imaginary perspective high in the air. From Abilene, Alvord, and Austin to Waco and Wichita Falls, see what many of your favorite towns looked like more than one hundred years ago.
From the close of the Civil War until shortly after the turn of the twentieth century, a number of artists traveled throughout the United States to create maplike scenes of each state’s burgeoning settlements, towns, and cities. These highly detailed and oversized lithographic prints, created by the artists as if seen from high above, came to be known as “bird’s-eye views.”
The Amon Carter Museum holds more than 300 bird’s-eye views in its collection, and more than fifty of these are of Texas cities. In Patterns of Progress, the images will be displayed in alphabetical order so that visitors can easily find the view of a particular city. The cities of Austin, Dallas, Denison, Fort Worth, Gainesville, Galveston, Greenville, Houston, New Braunfels, San Antonio, and Waco each have at least two views published on different dates. As an example, visitors will be able to see the growth of Austin from 1873, when the state capitol was a relatively small structure, to 1887, when the present state capitol had just been completed.
These prints are not only surprisingly accurate historical documents but intricate works of art as well. They were drawn by hand using, most often, two-point perspective to produce a three-dimensional rendering. According to research, eleven different itinerant artists drew and published at least sixty-seven bird’s-eye views of Texas cities. Visit Patterns of Progress: Bird’s-Eye Views of Texas to see firsthand what Texas looked like in the late nineteenth century. Also go to www.birdseyeviews.org, a Web site devoted to the study and appreciation of these objects.
Patterns of Progress: Bird’s-Eye Views of Texas is organized by the Amon Carter Museum, Fort Worth, Texas. The exhibition is made possible in part by grants from the Texas Commission on the Arts and the Clements Foundation. Media sponsor: TEXAS HIGHWAYS Magazine.
Visit the museum’s related online project, www.birdseyeviews.org, which the Dallas Morning News called “a hugely entertaining and instructive Web site.”