Amon Carter Museum

Barbara Crane (b. 1928) Urban Anomalies, 2001 Courtesy of the Chicago Cultural Center	Barbara Crane (b. 1928) Eaters, 1981 Courtesy of the Chicago Cultural Center
Barbara Crane (b. 1928) Beaches and Parks, 1972–78 Courtesy of the Chicago Cultural Center	Barbara Crane (b. 1928) Tucson Desert, 1980 Courtesy of the Chicago Cultural Center

Barbara Crane: Challenging Vision

February 14–May 10, 2009

On February 14, 2009, the Amon Carter Museum will present Barbara Crane: Challenging Vision, the first major retrospective in more than 25 years of the photographer’s work. This exhibition features 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. The exhibition will be on view through May 10, 2009, before moving on to the organizer’s venue, the Chicago Cultural Center.

Admission to all special exhibitions at the Amon Carter Museum is free.

Crane has long been one of America’s most influential teachers and respected artists,” says the Carter’s Senior Curator of Photographs John Rohrbach. “Her highly experimental and tremendously varied photographs animatedly challenge photography’s very character as a descriptive tool. This show exudes her infectious energy and imagination. Anyone who sees it will never look at photographs the same way again.”

For more than 60 years, Crane (b. 1928) has been stretching the boundaries of photography. Through single images, sequences, grids and scrolls that range in size from intimate to grand, her photographs are dynamic, bold and abstract; they are vibrant depictions of the rural and urban, the familiar and esoteric.

Crane herself has explained the sources of her art:

always been drawn to avant-garde, cutting edge art forms and have tried to find my inspiration in mediums other than photography,” she says. “As an art history student, I became interested in Asian art and was heavily influenced by Japanese scrolls, screens, prints and calligraphy. I was inspired by Frank Lloyd Wright’s and Corbusier’s daring ‘modern’ architecture, by the innovative aesthetic of the German Bauhaus, by the custom-defying independence of modern dance, and by the music of John Cage.

this day, I carry a small spiral notebook when attending a concert or visiting a museum to record what I find exciting for my future use—such as the pattern of musical rhythms, the dynamic of color combinations and spatial relationships, and adjacencies of color in Renaissance and Medieval paintings. I translate these influences into the endless options offered by photography.”

Crane has been the recipient of many grants, awards and fellowships, including National Endowment for the Arts grants in 1975 and 1988, a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship in Photography in 1979, and an Illinois Arts Council Artists Fellowship Award in Photography in 2001. Her work is represented in major collections around the country, including the George Eastman House in Rochester, N.Y.; the Art Institute of Chicago; the Center for Creative Photography in Tucson, Ariz.; and the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

Barbara Crane: Challenging Vision is accompanied by a fully illustrated 250-page publication with essays by Abigail Foerstner, of the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University, and Amon Carter Museum Senior Curator of Photographs John Rohrbach.

Organized by the Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs, this exhibition was guest curated by Kenneth C. Burkhart.

Public Programs: Admission is free.

Saturday, February 14, 11 a.m.
Preoccupied with Making Art
Amon Carter Museum Lectures on American Photography
Underwriting provided by the Anne Burnett Tandy Endowment
Barbara Crane, artist

There is no perfect moment to make art, no one rule about how or where to make it. It is, instead, about a lifelong preoccupation. Renowned photographer Barbara Crane discusses the “rewarding discomfort” that is the artistic process — the restlessness of the mind, the discipline of habit, and the tapping into the unconscious.

Reservations are required; seating is limited. Please call 817.989.5057 by February 11 to register; confirmation will be sent.

For further information contact:
Tracy Greene
(817) 989-5067
tracy.greene@cartermuseum.org
or:
Anna Caplan
(817) 989-5065
anna.caplan@cartermuseum.org

Anna Hyatt Huntington (1876–1973) The Team, 1903 Bronze, Purchased with funds from the Ruth Carter Stevenson Acquisitions Endowment	Jean Xceron (1890–1967) White and Gray, no. 256, 1941 Purchased with funds provided by the Council of the Amon Carter Museum

Amon Carter Museum Acquires:
Anna Hyatt Huntington’s 'The Team'
Jean Xceron’s 'White and Gray, no. 256'

Amon Carter Museum Director Ron Tyler announced today the acquisition of two 20th century American works: a bronze sculpture entitled The Team by Anna Hyatt Huntington (1876–1973) and a painting entitled White and Gray, no. 256 by Jean Xceron (1890–1967). Both works can be seen in the museum’s painting and sculpture galleries.

The Team
Anna Hyatt Huntington was one of the most prominent early 2oth century animaliers, artists who specialize in the realistic portrayal of animals. The Team, a bronze of two draft horses working in tandem, is one of Huntington’s early works.

the purchase of The Team, we have significantly added to our collection of notable animal sculptures, which includes works by a number of Huntington’s contemporaries—Gutzon Borglum, William Stanley Haseltine, Alexander Proctor, Frederic Remington and Charles Russell,” Tyler says.

Huntington produced The Team in 1903 at the Roman Bronze Works foundry, one year after her formal training with George Grey Barnard and Hermon Atkins MacNeil at the Art Students League in New York. Depicting the harsh conditions of work horses, the piece’s subjects move precariously down an incline. Harnessed together, one horse is resolute, the other is struggling.

“The Team is a testament to Huntington’s natural artistic gifts, keen powers of observation, and challenging compositions, all hallmarks of a masterwork,” says Rebecca Lawton, curator of paintings and sculpture. “She so perfectly captures the essence of these horses and their fiery spirits. We are privileged to have it in our collection and share it with others.”

White and Gray, no. 256
White and Gray, no. 256, painted in 1941, is among Greek-born American painter Jean Xceron’s most refined and rigorously constructed abstractions. Influenced by the movements of Cubism, Neoplasticism, Suprematism and Constructivism, the oil on canvas joins a variety of abstract works by Alexander Calder, Stuart Davis and John Ferren in the museum’s permanent collection.

“White and Gray, no. 256 supplements a growing and impressive collection of abstract art in the Carter’s collection,” Tyler says. “The work provides an important bridge between the first and second generation of American abstract artists.”

In the painting, Xceron employs a series of rectilinear elements of various sizes and grid lines of diverse thickness, positioning them vertically and horizontally against a subtly modulated background. Moreover, the use of subdued tones for some of the shapes and lines allows them to appear to hover above the background, which shimmers, creating a radiant backdrop. The solid black rectangle at center left presents a darkened void, which is countered by the luminous and larger white rectangle at right. Xceron’s precise orchestration of elements is beautifully balanced, achieving an overall formal unity that suggests weightless and suspended energy.

White and Gray, no. 256, Xceron achieves great compositional harmony and a purer, more elegant formalism than is seen in his earlier work,” Lawton says. “The painting epitomizes his mature style, reflecting both the range of styles he had absorbed in Paris, as well as his own interpretation of them. Abstract art enthusiasts will certainly delight in this piece.”

About Anna Hyatt Huntington (1876–1973)
Anna Hyatt Huntington was raised in Cambridge, Mass., where her family fostered her love of animals and encouraged her to develop her artistic talents. She studied with Henry Hudson Kitson in Boston, with Hermon Atkins MacNeil and George Grey Barnard at the Art Students League in New York, as well as with Gutzon Borglum. Huntington worked with her sister Harriet Hyatt Mayor early in her career and later collaborated with Abastenia St. Leger Eberle on many large works.

In the early 1900’s Huntington sold her work through the Boston emporium Shreve, Crump and Low. At a show at the Boston Art Club, her first major patron, the legendary Boston financier Thomas W. Lawson, likely encountered her work. He considered her “the coming Rosa Bonheur” and eventually owned a sizable number of her bronzes.

After working several years in Boston and New York, Huntington went abroad to work in Italy and France, where she created the life-sized, bronze sculpture Joan of Arc. After returning to New York City, she produced many pieces from 1911 to 1917, receiving much acclaim. In 1912 she was listed as one of 12 U.S. women earning $50,000 annually.

Huntington married philanthropist and scholar Archer Milton Huntington in 1923. They purchased Brookgreen Gardens in South Carolina as a place of respite after Anna contracted tuberculosis in 1927. The gardens became a public showcase for more than 300 sculptures—a mix of Huntington’s work as well as her collected pieces. After she recovered, Anna and her husband moved to Connecticut in 1939, where she continued working until a few years before her death at age 97.

About Jean Xceron (1890–1967)
Jean Xceron’s formal training occurred while attending the Corcoran School of Art in Washington, D.C., from 1910 to 1917. He moved to New York City in 1920, where he met Joaquin Torres-García, who became an early mentor. By 1927 Xceron had moved to Paris, earning a living as an art critic for the Chicago Tribune and the Boston Evening Transcript. But more importantly, Xceron immersed himself in abstract art through direct contact with a number of Europe’s major abstractionists including Jean Arp, Albert Gleizes, Jean Hélion, Wassily Kandinsky, Fernand Léger, Piet Mondrian and Theo van Doesburg, among others. With an exhibition of his work in 1931 at the prestigious Galerie de France, Xceron made a name for himself among Parisian art circles, which served him well upon his return to the United States in late 1937.

Xceron’s move back to New York coincided with the development of the “second wave” of abstract art in America. The American Abstract Artists (AAA) was formed in 1936, and the Museum of Non-Objective Painting, containing the Solomon R. Guggenheim Collection, opened in 1939. Xceron was eagerly embraced by the artists within AAA for his firsthand knowledge of European abstraction. Hilla Rebay, Solomon Guggenheim’s art adviser and the founding director of his museum, quickly purchased several Xceron paintings for Guggenheim’s collection and hired the artist to work as an artist/curator at the museum, a position he held until his death in 1967.

For further information contact:
Tracy Greene
(817) 989-5067
tracy.greene@cartermuseum.org
or:
Anna Caplan
(817) 989-5065
anna.caplan@cartermuseum.org

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.

For further information contact:
Tracy Greene
(817) 989-5067
tracy.greene@cartermuseum.org
or:
Anna Caplan
(817) 989-5065
anna.caplan@cartermuseum.org

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.

For further information contact:
Tracy Greene
(817) 989-5067
tracy.greene@cartermuseum.org
or:
Anna Caplan
(817) 989-5065
anna.caplan@cartermuseum.org

High Modernism

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.

For further information contact:
Tracy Greene
(817) 989-5067
tracy.greene@cartermuseum.org
or:
Anna Caplan
(817) 989-5065
anna.caplan@cartermuseum.org

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.

For further information contact:
Tracy Greene
(817) 989-5067
tracy.greene@cartermuseum.org
or:
Anna Caplan
(817) 989-5065
anna.caplan@cartermuseum.org