Foregrounding artists across genres and generations, the schedule features historic works by Richard Avedon and Louise Nevelson and debuts new projects by contemporary artists including Leonardo Drew and James Prosek

Fort Worth, TX, January 12, 2023—The Amon Carter Museum of American Art (the Carter) announces its 2023 exhibition schedule, showcasing innovative scholarship, expansive offerings from the Carter’s collection, including its strong photographic holdings, and new works and commissions by contemporary artists. Major solo and group presentations include an exhibition of seven installations that visualize the legacy of the Civil War in 2023 and beyond in response to the Carter’s The Freedman sculpture, a presentation of over 50 pivotal midcentury works by Louise Nevelson, and selected works from Richard Avedon’s acclaimed In the American West series in recognition of the artist’s 100th birthday.

Continuing the Museum’s commitment to living artists working today, the Carter is presenting the nationally touring survey of Los Angeles-based photographer Christina Fernandez and premiering new work inspired by the Texas prairies by conceptual artist James Prosek. Brooklyn-based artist Leonardo Drew will be the fourth artist commissioned to transform the Carter’s “sloping gallery,” which connects the Museum’s buildings. Known for his large-scale, multi-dimensional installations, Drew employs organic materials to create topographies that are looming in size and stunning in their intricacies. Additionally, the Museum’s 2023 program debuts conservation scholarship in an examination of late work by modernist painter Arthur Dove, providing new insight into the prolific artist’s process.

Exhibitions opening in 2023 include:

Morning Light: Photographs of David H. Gibson

January 14–May 21, 2023

Dallas photographer David H. Gibson has been exploring the beauty of the Southwestern landscape for more than 50 years, building a reputation as an astute interpreter of changing light. Through twenty artworks capturing daybreak, Morning Light: The Photographs of David H. Gibson explores two of the artist’s favorite sites, Cypress Creek in Wimberley, Texas, and Eagle Nest Lake nestled in the mountains east of Taos, New Mexico.

Emancipation: The Unfinished Project of Liberation

March 12–July 9, 2023

In conjunction with the 160th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation, the Carter presents newly commissioned and recent works by Sadie Barnette, Alfred Conteh, Maya Freelon, Hugh Hayden, Letitia Huckaby, Jeffrey Meris, and Sable Elyse Smith in a new exhibition visualizing Black freedom, agency, and the legacy of the Civil War. The seven installations featured in Emancipation: The Unfinished Project of Liberation—spanning sculpture, photography, and paper and textile fabrications—respond to the legacy of John Quincy Adams Ward’s bronze sculpture The Freedman (1863) from the Carter’s collection and highlight the diversity of materials and forms in sculpture, installation, and mixed media today. Co-organized by the Carter and the Williams College Museum of Art, the exhibition demonstrates how historical art collections can be a resource and inspiration for contemporary artistic practices.

Christina Fernandez: Multiple Exposures

March 12–July 9, 2023

This exhibition, organized by the California Museum of Photography at UCR ARTS, Riverside, CA, is the first extensive survey of work by the Los Angeles-based photographer Christina Fernandez. The artist has spent decades in a rich exploration of migration, labor, gender, her Mexican American identity, and the unique capacities of the photographic medium itself. Christina Fernandez: Multiple Exposures firmly centers Fernandez’s work within contemporaneous movements including postmodernism and the Chicano movement. In this comprehensive solo exhibition spanning 30 years of artwork, Fernandez’s images compel viewers to reconsider history, the border, and the lives of those who cross and inhabit them.

Avedon’s West

April 1–October 1, 2023

Spring 2023 marks the 100th anniversary of the birth of Richard Avedon, renowned fashion and portrait photographer. As part of a national celebration led by The Richard Avedon Foundation, the Carter is showcasing thirteen works of art from the acclaimed project In the American West, which the Museum commissioned in 1979 and premiered in 1985. Over the course of five years, Avedon traveled through thirteen states and 189 towns from Texas to Idaho, conducting 752 sittings and photographing a range of everyday people throughout the western U.S. in a now-iconic style he’d formerly applied to celebrities and politicians. The Carter owns one of only two complete sets of the series—one of the most important photographic projects of the 20th century. The selection of photographs from the series will be presented throughout the Museum’s collection galleries.

Elizabeth Turk

May 2023–May 2024

In continuation of the multiyear outdoor sculpture program launched in 2022 to activate the Museum’s grounds, Elizabeth Turk’s The Tipping Point: Echoes of Extinction will mark the third installation in this initiative. Turk’s series comprises vertical sound sculptures of bird species that are endangered or are extinct. Each artwork is a sculptural visualization of the call of a bird that has reached, or surpassed, a tipping point. Whether it is a story of loss (the Ivory-billed Woodpecker) or regeneration (Bald Eagle), each sculpture stands as a totemic memorial to a particular species, reminding us of our role in the precious and delicate—and quickly changing—environment. Accompanying each sculpture is a QR code containing the audio files of the bird’s song; many of the species inhabit, or were previously found, in Texas.

Arthur Dove: Miniature Laboratories

May 13–August 27, 2023

Drawn primarily from the Carter’s collection, Arthur Dove: Miniature Laboratories examines for a selection of work from the last years of Dove’s life (1940–46). These small works were created when Dove was confined in his home and the surrounding area in Long Island, NY, due to health issues. During this time, he created hundreds of works on paper, most measuring three-by-four-inches, experimenting with various mediums and techniques. An in-depth examination and analysis of these works by the Carter’s conservation team reveals new insight into Dove’s creative process.

Leonardo Drew: Number 235T

June 17, 2023–June 2024

Sculptor Leonardo Drew is the next contemporary artist to transform the Museum’s first-floor galleries with a new site-specific commission. Known for his large-scale, multi-dimensional installations, Drew employs organic materials to create topographies that are looming in size and stunning in their intricacies. For Number 235T, Drew will anchor sculptural pieces that he refers to as “planets” and surround them with hundreds of smaller objects as he works to identify the interconnectedness of them all. This commission is the latest in a series initiated by the Carter in 2015 to respond to works in the Museum’s collection through the perspectives of American artists working today.

The World Outside: Louise Nevelson at Midcentury

August 27, 2023–January 7, 2024

The World Outside: Louise Nevelson at Midcentury is one of the first exhibitions examining Louise Nevelson’s midcentury sculptures and works on paper through the lens of the artistic and cultural landscape that shaped her vision. Bringing together defining examples of Nevelson’s wall works, installations, and prints from across the country—many side by side for the first time—The World Outside illuminates Nevelson’s multidimensional mastery of form and reaffirms the significance of her works as critical accounts of American history. The exhibition, through more than 50 key artworks, offers an in-depth study of the artistic, economic, and political forces behind Nevelson’s multifaceted innovations at midcentury. Working against repressive gender norms and a culture of mass consumption, Nevelson subverted the era’s obsession with domesticity and industrial production by championing hands-on techniques and repurposed materials.

Come to Colorado

August 27, 2023–January 7, 2024

Drawn exclusively from the Carter’s Fred and Jo Mazzulla Collection, this exhibition showcases 19th-century photographs including work from W. J. Carpenter, Joseph M. Collier, and William Henry Jackson. Fred Mazzulla spent decades building a collection of visual materials, including photographs, about the history of Colorado. Acquired by the Carter in 1976, these rarely shown photographs document Colorado’s settlement by White Americans, and the promotion of the area as an outdoor playground in tandem with the growth of the mining industry of the late 19th century.

Trespassers: James Prosek and the Texas Prairie

September 16, 2023–January 28, 2024

Less than 1 percent of native prairies exist across the state of Texas. This conservation concern is the catalyst for more than 20 new works created by artist and naturalist James Prosek. Over the past two years, Prosek has traveled to grassland habitats across the state, ranging from urban restoration projects to unplowed remnant prairies, documenting the rich plant and wildlife diversity of these spaces. Trespassers: James Prosek and the Texas Prairie features a new large-scale silhouette painting, one of Prosek’s signature working styles; watercolor portraits of plants collected during his travels; and trompe l’oeil clay and bronze sculptures of wildflowers. Through these works, Prosek investigates the allure of Texas’s grasslands while raising broader questions about the boundaries that shape, limit, and define prairie spaces in the present day.

Images (left to right): Louise Nevelson (1899–1988), Lunar Landscape, 1959–60, painted wood, Amon Carter Museum of American Art, Fort Worth, Texas, Purchase with funds from the Ruth Carter Stevenson Acquisitions Endowment, 1999.3.A-J; Leonardo Drew, Photo by Christopher Garcia; Richard Avedon (1923-2004), Ruby Mercer, Publicist, Frontier Days, Cheyenne, Wyoming, 7/31/82, 1982, printed 1985, gelatin silver print, Amon Carter Museum of American Art, Fort Worth, Texas P1985.28.73 © The Richard Avedon Foundation; Letitia Huckaby (b. 1972),  Ms. Angela and the Baby, 2022, pigment print on fabric with embroidery, Courtesy of the artist and Talley Dunn Gallery, © Letitia Huckaby; Christina Fernandez (b. 1965), Lavanderia #1, 2002, archival pigment print, from the series Lavanderia, courtesy of the artist and Gallery Luisotti, Los Angeles, © Christina Fernandez; James Prosek (b. 1975), Liatris and other elements (Thomsen Prairie and points near Forestburg and Saint Jo, Texas), 2022, watercolor, gouache, powdered mica, graphite, and colored pencil on paper, Courtesy of the artist, © James Prosek; David H. Gibson (b. 1939), Morning Along Cypress Creek, Wimberley, Texas, April 15, 2007, 7:07 AM, inkjet print, Courtesy of the artist, © David H. Gibson

About the Amon Carter Museum of American Art

Located in the heart of Fort Worth’s Cultural District, the Amon Carter Museum of American Art (the Carter) is a dynamic cultural resource that provides unique access and insight into the history and future of American creativity through its expansive exhibitions and programming. The Carter’s preeminent collection includes masterworks by legendary American artists such as Ruth Asawa, Alexander Calder, Frederic Church, Stuart Davis, Robert Duncanson, Thomas Eakins, Georgia O’Keeffe, Jacob Lawrence, and John Singer Sargent, as well as one of the country’s foremost repositories of American photography. In addition to its innovative exhibition program and engagement with artists working today, the Museum’s premier primary research collection and leading conservation program make it a must-see destination for art lovers and scholars of all ages nationwide. Admission is always free. To learn more about the Carter, visit cartermuseum.org.