January 05, 2009 Amon Carter Museum Schedule of Exhibitions: January through Spring 2009

View of cream-colored gallery walls; the title wall and text is on the right; to the left one can see several framed photographs hanging on a wall.

Fort Worth, TX, January 5, 2009

Focus on Photographs: Generations

Through February 8, 2009
The Amon Carter Museum photography collection includes the archives of three of the artists represented in this exhibition: Carlotta Corpron, Laura Gilpin, and Karl Struss. Their archives contain prints, negatives and manuscripts, along with items such as photographs by other artists who played an important role in their lives and professional development. Through these archives and related material collected by the museum, viewers can learn about the traditions of photographic practice that extend through successive generations.

Mary Lucier: The Plains of Sweet Regret

Through February 15, 2009
A hauntingly beautiful world of landscape and loss, this video installation brings into view, through music and imagery, the rapid depopulation of the northern plains. Laced with both melancholy and loveliness, this work by video artist Mary Lucier examines the seismic changes that have swept away family farms and ranches, small towns and rural schools.

Mary Lucier: The Plains of Sweet Regret was commissioned by the North Dakota Museum of Art with funding from the National Endowment for the Arts. Production has been funded by the Creative Capital and the Rockefeller Foundation. Curated by Laurel Reuter, director, North Dakota Museum of Art.

An American Original: George Bellows, His Lithographs, and the 1936 Texas Centennial

Through April 19, 2009
The fascinating and diverse lithographs of famed American painter and printmaker George Bellows are featured in this special exhibition from the Carter’s permanent collection. The show reassembles Bellows’ 32 lithographs from the 1936 Texas Centennial Exposition in Dallas. Bellows was known for his ability to capture the truth of American life through his varied subject matter, which includes scenes of urban life, boxing, popular religion, portraits, female nudes, and magazine illustrations.

First Look: Masterworks of American Photography

Through June 7, 2009
This is the first time these works—all part of the Amon Carter Museum photography collection—have been exhibited at the museum. Taken together, they reflect the diversity and richness of an American visual tradition.

Barbara Crane: Challenging Vision

February 14–May 10, 2009
For more than 60 years, Crane has been stretching the boundaries of photography. Through single images, sequences, grids and scrolls that range from intimate to grand, her photographs are dynamic, bold and abstract; they are vibrant depictions of the rural and urban, the familiar and esoteric. This exhibition—featuring nearly 200 photographs from Crane’s internationally heralded early studies of human form through her chronicle of Chicago city life to her recent explorations of nature—is the first major retrospective in more than 25 years of the photographer’s work. Organized by the Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs, this exhibition was guest curated by Kenneth C. Burkhart.

High Modernism: Alfred Stieglitz and His Legacy

March 7–June 28, 2009
Modern art photography is widely recognized as having been born in the 1910s from the work of Alfred Stieglitz and his hand-picked group of artists. Blending sharp focus, fine printing and overtly structured composition, these artists did not merely document life, they used the camera as a means to express intense emotional connection to the world. This exhibition follows the pathway set by Stieglitz and his colleagues through the work of his philosophical successor Minor White and photographers working today who subscribe to Stieglitz’s profound attachment to beauty and uplift.

The Harmon and Harriet Kelley Collection of African-American Art: Works on Paper

June 6–August 23, 2009
The works of more than 50 African-American artists from the late 1800s to the early years of this century are on view in this special exhibition. Drawn from the Harmon and Harriet Kelley Collection—an esteemed private collection of works by African-American artists—the exhibition features more than 90 works on paper by artists such as Elizabeth Catlett, William H. Johnson, Alison Saar and Charles White. The exhibition was organized by Landau Traveling Exhibitions, Los Angeles, California.

Concurrent to this exhibition, the Carter will mount the one-gallery exhibition African-American Art: Selections from the Amon Carter Museum’s Collection. Showcasing some of the museum’s landmark prints and drawings from the same era as those in the Kelley exhibition, this exhibition’s featured artists include Charles Alton, Grafton Tyler Brown, Elizabeth Catlett, William H. Johnson, Jacob Lawrence, William E. Smith, Dox Thrash, Charles White, and John Wilson.