Amon Carter Museum

Intimate Modernism: Fort Worth Circle Artists in the 1940s

Lia Cuilty (1908–1978), Arrested Flight, ca. 1943, Watercolor on paper, Heirs of Lia Cuilty: Caroline M. Dulle, Susan M. Pritchett, Steve Murrin Jr.	Veronica Helfensteller (1910–1964), Doorway Aviary, 1948, Watercolor and gouache on paper, Courtesy of the Old Jail Art Center, Albany, Texas. Gift of Reilly Nail
Marjorie Johnson (Lee), Studio Corner, 1949, Oil on canvas, David Dike, Dallas, Texas	Kelly Fearing (born 1918), The Collector, 1946, Oil and wax on panel, Private Collection, Dallas, Texas

Presented at the Amon Carter Museum

On February 16 - May 11, nearly 100 paintings, watercolors and prints generated by a diverse group of creative individuals known as the Fort Worth Circle will be on view at the Amon Carter Museum in the special exhibition "Intimate Modernism: Fort Worth Circle Artists in the 1940s." The exhibition presents an outstanding visual narrative of Texas' first colony of artists to practice an advanced aesthetic. More than 20 years have passed since a major body of work by the Fort Worth Circle has been on view in one place.

"Many of the works in the exhibition will be making their first public appearance in more than 50 years," said Jane Myers, senior curator of prints and drawings and organizing curator of the show. "Together, the works will reveal a fascinating story of vibrant and vitalized collaborations and friendships, and they will tell the tale of how progressive art came to Texas."

The origin of the Fort Worth Circle can be defined as a nucleus of four locals in their mid-20s who met as art students at the Fort Worth School of Fine Arts: Lia Cuilty, Veronica Helfensteller, Marjorie Johnson and Bror Utter. Just prior to America's involvement in World War II, Dickson Reeder, a high school classmate of Utter's, assumed leadership of the group. Reeder and his New York-born wife, Flora Blanc, provided the social glue that bonded the group together. Also in the sphere were Sara Shannon and William P. (Bill) Bomar Jr. Reeder, Bomar, and Helfensteller all received private art instruction as teenagers from the same teacher. Kelly Fearing was assimilated into the group after moving to Fort Worth during the war. In 1945, Cynthia Brants became the youngest female member of the Circle, and the following year George Grammer, the youngest of the artists, was the last to join when Fearing and the Reeders, who had followed his work, looped him into their network.

Drawn together by a shared interest in art, dance, music, theater, and myth, the artists of the Fort Worth Circle sought new avenues of artistic expression to counter the prevailing preference for regionalism and other more conservative artistic styles. They also shared a fascination for the fantastic, often employing enigmatic imagery. Members of the Circle responded to modern art by creating a unique aesthetic based on contemporary surrealism and abstraction, and they did so by drawing from their own fertile imaginations.

The determination with which the group ascended in the city and the dominance they established in the public mind became the driving forces of Fort Worth's art world throughout the years of World War II and the decade beyond. Among the legends and legendary figures of Fort Worth-and there are many-the artists of the Fort Worth Circle occupy a special place as pioneers of modern art in the Lone Star State.

The decade of the Fort Worth Circle's rise to prominence is a little-known highpoint in the artistic legacy of Fort Worth and the State of Texas. Largely apolitical in an era rife with global upheaval, the Circle remained ideologically charged by their unyielding belief in the transformative power of art. By the mid-1950s, the group's aesthetic was pushed aside by newer ideas, but their legacy of change and openness to the unlimited boundaries of art was firmly entrenched. They later became influential teachers and artists and played a critical role in the region's growing arts community, which continues to thrive today and encourage the careers of emerging artists. Works by artists of the Fort Worth Circle now reside throughout the state in museums and private collections, so the exhibition presents a unique opportunity to view the works together.

Intimate Modernism: Fort Worth Circle Artists in the 1940s" is accompanied by a catalogue of the same name. With more than 140 full-color reproductions, the publication will remain the definitive source on their art and history for years to come. It chronicles the Circle's distinctive output during the 1940s and includes succinct biographies, accompanied by photographs, of each of the 11 artists.

Intimate Modernism: Fort Worth Circle Artists in the 1940s is organized by the Amon Carter Museum. The exhibition and accompanying catalogue are made possible in part by RBC Dain Rauscher, Humanities Texas, Texas Commission on the Arts, Mrs. W. K. Gordon Jr., Quicksilver Resources, Valley House Gallery and Sculpture Garden, and numerous individuals and organizations who remember and value these Fort Worth artists.

For further information contact: Amon Carter Museum, 3501 Camp Bowie Blvd., (817) 989-5066, FAX: (817) 989-5079, Website: www.cartermuseum.org Or Email: Carol Noel, Public Relations Coordinator, carol.noel@cartermuseum.org

Hip Pocket & Amon Carter Present Tempest In A Dream

Hip Pocket Theatre and the Amon Carter Museum are presenting a fun, fanciful and family friendly take on Shakespeare in a special play that honors Dickson and Flora Reeder, two of the artists featured in the special exhibition Intimate Modernism: Fort Worth Circle Artists in the 1940s, on view at the Carter through May 11.

The couple founded their Reeder Children’s Theater and Design School in Fort Worth in 1945, and for the next 12 years enabled hundreds of Fort Worth youth and their parents to experience a panoramic view of the interrelation of the arts. With Dickson Reeder creating the sets and costumes and Flora’s in charge of training the young actors, the school’s curriculum allowed children, ages four to fourteen, to undertake the study of a single play over the course of each school year, culminating in a spring performance.

Tempest in a Dream, adapted and directed by Hip Pocket Theatre’s Diane Simons, intertwines the plots of The Tempest and A Midsummer Night’s Dream into a story that pays tribute to the Reeder’s efforts with the school and its impact on the community.

“The Reeders left an enormous legacy that has not only directly affected and inspired the Hip Pocket Theatre but also countless artists – visual, musical and of course theatrical,” Simons said. “I came across Flora’s script for The Tempest, and some of her cutting and musical notations are used in this performance.”

Tempest in a Dream will be presented in the Back Gallery at the Fort Worth Community Arts Center at 1300 Gendy Street, just across the street from the Amon Carter Museum. The gallery’s capacity is 125, and there are four performance times: Saturday, April 5, 7 p.m., Sunday, April 6, 2 p.m., Friday, April 11, 7 p.m., Saturday, April 12, 7 p.m.

Admission is free; tickets are available on a first-come, first-served basis by calling the museum at 817-989-5057 or e-mailing education@cartermuseum.org . They can also be picked up at the Information Desk on the main floor.

This program is made possible by the generous support of the Betty Sanders Family.

For further information contact: Amon Carter Museum, 3501 Camp Bowie Blvd., (817) 989-5066, FAX: (817) 989-5079, Website: www.cartermuseum.org Or Email: Carol Noel, Public Relations Coordinator, carol.noel@cartermuseum.org

Polls Open at the Amon Carter Museum for Decision 2008

The Texas Primaries have come and gone, but the ballot box is just opening at the Amon Carter Museum as it launches Decision 2008.

Visitors of all ages are invited to “vote” for their favorite work of art from the museum’s permanent collection of American paintings and sculpture. Better yet—and unlike a political election—voters get to explain why they love their favorite work of art.

Visitors can vote at the museum; ballots and ballot boxes are available at the information desk. There is also an online ballot at http://www.cartermuseum.org/decision-2008.

“At the Carter, we are very interested in hearing from our visitors,” said Nora Christie Puckett, student, family and adult programs manager. “Decision 2008 is a fun way for them to bring the spirit of the election year into the museum, take a fresh look at the art, and share their insights and opinions."

Voting is open until the end of May. As the extended election process continues, select responses will be published on the Amon Carter Museum’s Web site. Once the tallying takes place, the “winning” artworks will be featured in four different Visitors Voice programs in June and July. These will be free and open to the public.

At the Amon Carter Museum, visitors can learn about this country’s fascinating social and cultural history through great works of American art.

Admission to the museum is free. Hours are Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday 10 – 5; Thursday 10 – 8; Sunday Noon – 5; closed Mondays and major holidays.

For further information contact: Amon Carter Museum, 3501 Camp Bowie Blvd., Website: www.cartermuseum.org Or Email: Ann Thaxton , ann.thaxton@cartermuseum.org 817.989.5065; cell 817-999-9730

Vivid Watercolors Capture Historic Fort Worth Buildings

Seventeen brilliant watercolor paintings of some of Fort Worth's most iconic historic buildings will be on view at the Amon Carter Museum in the exhibition Fort Worth Landmarks in the 1950s: Watercolors by Bror Utter from March 8-June 15. Admission is free.

Executed primarily between 1956 and 1957, the works feature homes, churches, businesses and other structures symbolic of a prospering, evolving community whose economy was founded on the agricultural and cattle trades. The original Star-Telegram Building, the Old Post Office, Armour and Company and the Martin Casey Building are a few of the structures Utter painted that have since been demolished. The Knights of Pythias Castle Hall, the residence of F. Hays McFarland and the St. Ignatius Academy are among the buildings that still stand.

"The Carter is honored to be the steward for these vivid and compelling reminders of Fort Worth's long-standing concern for historic preservation," said Jane Myers, the Carter's senior curator of works on paper.

The body of work was commissioned in 1956 by the First National Bank of Fort Worth at the urging of Samuel Benton Cantey III, a bank vice president and Utter's longtime patron. Cantey viewed the project as symbolic of First National's integral community presence and as a means for preserving the spirit and character of Fort Worth's storied past. The series was infused with a sense of urgency by the impending demolition of the Star-Telegram Building, built in 1904 in downtown Fort Worth. The structure, which one housed Amon G. Carter's burgeoning newspaper business, was only days away from the wrecker's ball when Utter sketched his first drawings. He completed Star-Telegram Building in January 1957, with other paintings following at the rate of about one a month. Within a few years of the commission's completion, more than half of the buildings Utter captured had been razed.

Utter was a gifted watercolorist, and he reveled in the lively architectural styles the late-Victorian structures presented: Queen Anne, Second Empire, and Romanesque and Gothic Revival. The artist also merged his love of vivid colors with the era's preference for such materials as red sandstone and vibrant residential paints.

When the works were displayed in the bank's lobby, public reaction was so positive that Cantey and bank president J. Lee Johnson Jr. delayed plans to install the series in the bank's dining area, choosing instead to send it on a two-year exhibition tour that included fifteen stops in twelve Texas cities. Colleges and museums in communities both large and small hosted the exhibit. After the watercolors returned to the First National Bank, they were displayed in staff areas until they were eventually relegated to storage. In recent years, the works were on public view in the building's lobby at 500 West Seventh Street.

Beginning in the late 1990s Ruth Carter Stevenson, the museum board's president, made several overtures to acquire the works for the museum. When the bank building was acquired in early 2007 by First on 7th, an entity run by the Darden family of Fort Worth, conditions turned favorable and Stevenson's efforts were rewarded. The works were gifted to the museum, and in return the museum produced for the bank archival-quality, full-color reproductions of the watercolors for display in their lobby. (Archival reproductions of several of the works are available from the Museum Store.)

The entire set of the watercolors will be on display in the Carter's Works on Paper Galleries. The stories of each building, along with photographic reproductions, will complement the works.

Several works by Bror Utter are also on view at the Carter in the special exhibition Intimate Modernism: Fort Worth Artists in the 1940s, which reveals the story of several artists, including Utter, who together formed the first modern art colony in Texas.

At the Amon Carter Museum, visitors learn about this country's fascinating social and cultural history through great works of American art.

For further information contact: Amon Carter Museum, 3501 Camp Bowie Blvd., (817) 989-5066, FAX: (817) 989-5079, Website: www.cartermuseum.org Or Email: Carol Noel, Public Relations Coordinator, carol.noel@cartermuseum.org

Celebrated Art Critic Dave Hickey Comes Home to Fort Worth for Lecture at the Carter

Saturday, March 29, 11 a.m.

Dave Hickey, one of the best-known American art and cultural critics working today, will present a lecture entitled Fort Worth: How Cowtown Became a Center for Art in the West at the Amon Carter Museum on Saturday, March 29, at 11 a.m. The lecture is in conjunction with the special exhibition Intimate Modernism: Fort Worth Circle Artists in the 1940s.

Admission to the lecture is free; visitors are asked to register by calling 817.989.5057.

Hickey is a native of Fort Worth. He has written for dozens of major American publications including Rolling Stone, Art News, Art in America, Artforum and Vanity Fair. His critical essays have been published in two volumes: The Invisible Dragon: Four Essays on Beauty (1993) and Air Guitar: Essays on Art and Democracy (1997). He has been the subject of profiles in The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, U.S. News and World Report and Texas Monthly, among others.

About the Fort Worth Circle, Hickey once wrote: “It is reassuring to me personally, and I would hope to others as well, just to know that for one swift decade in this part of the country a group of functioning, contemporary artists who believed in the seriousness of their endeavor, lived and flourished in a community which believed in them, attended their exhibitions, and purchased their work.”

Hickey will share his insights on how the work of the Fort Worth Circle relates to other artistic and creative movements that were emerging during the same time period throughout the western United States. Intimate Modernism: Fort Worth Circle Artists in the 1940s will be on view through May 11.

At the Amon Carter Museum, visitors learn about this country’s fascinating social and cultural history through great works of American art.

For further information contact: Amon Carter Museum, 3501 Camp Bowie Blvd., (817) 989-5066, FAX: (817) 989-5079, Website: www.cartermuseum.org Or Email: Carol Noel, Public Relations Coordinator, carol.noel@cartermuseum.org

Tempest in a Dream

Sunday, April 5, 7 p.m.
Sunday, April 6, 2 p.m.
Friday, April 11, 7 p.m.
Saturday, April 12, 7 p.m.
Performance
Tempest in a Dream
Adapted and directed by Diane Simons, Hip Pocket Theater
Presented in the Back Gallery at the Fort Worth Community Art Center
Experience an interactive, family friendly tribute to Dickson and Flora Reeder and their Reeder School of Theater and Design for Children, which during the 1940s and 1950s had a tremendous impact on the Fort Worth community and whose influence is still seen today at the Hip Pocket Theater. Works by the Reeders a re on view in "Intimate Modernism: Fort Worth Circle Artists in the 1940s."

For further information contact: Amon Carter Museum, 3501 Camp Bowie Blvd., (817) 989-5066, FAX: (817) 989-5079, Website: www.cartermuseum.org Or Email: Carol Noel, Public Relations Coordinator, carol.noel@cartermuseum.org

The Art of the American Snapshot

Unknown photographer
Mary Girow’s Cadillac, September 9, 1956
Gelatin silver print
National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., Gift of Robert E. Jackson

The range and creativity of amateur photography in the United States are revealed in nearly 200 anonymous works in the exhibition The Art of the American Snapshot, 1888-1978: From the Collection of Robert E. Jackson, to be presented at the Amon Carter Museum February 16 - April 27, 2008. Organized by the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., it is the first major exhibition to examine the evolution of snapshot imagery in America. The Art of the American Snapshot explores how snapshots have had a profound impact on American life, memory, and fine art photography.

The exhibition begins with the invention of the Kodak camera in 1888 and extends through the 1970s, focusing on the changes in culture and technology that enabled and determined the look of snapshots over the years. It also considers the influence of popular imagery as well as the use of recurring poses, viewpoints, framing, camera tricks and subject matter.

"In the years since 1888, when George Eastman and others made it possible for anyone to make a photograph, billions of snapshots have been made in this country alone," said Earl A. Powell III, director of the National Gallery of Art. "This exhibition and catalogue celebrate the remarkable creativity of American amateur photographers and provide fascinating insights into American life in the last century."

Added John Rohrbach, senior curator of photographs at the Amon Carter Museum, "Snapshots are the foundation of our visual culture. Everyone, from celebrated artists to rank amateurs, makes them. This display offers a wonderful opportunity to enjoy amateurs' use of the camera to play tricks on the viewer, to record their most poignant and personal concerns, and to simply have fun."

When Eastman introduced the Kodak camera and roll film, he revolutionized the way Americans represented themselves and marked life events. The Kodak was portable, fairly inexpensive, and easy to use, allowing the user to capture abundant images of everyday life. With the advent of the digital age, the silver-based snapshot prints of the past are fast becoming historical artifacts.

Over the past decade, Robert E. Jackson has assembled one of the foremost collections of American snapshots. Purchased at flea markets, art fairs and online, these snapshots have become separated from their original context and stripped of their personal meaning, inviting us to view them in new ways.

The exhibition is organized chronologically. It charts the cultural influences and technological advances that encouraged amateurs to explore new subjects and styles, investigates the common tricks and technical gaffes in amateur snapshots, and reveals how behavior while posing for the camera changed over time.

The Art of the American Snapshot is accompanied by a catalogue of the same name, which just received the College Art Association's Alfred H. Barr Jr. Award, given each year for an especially distinguished catalogue in the history of art published under the auspices of a museum, library or collection. The catalogue authors are National Gallery of Art curators Sarah Greenough and Diane Waggoner, with contributions from Sarah Kennel and Matthew S. Witkovsky. It is published with the assistance of The Getty Foundation. The 304-page hardcover edition is published in association with Princeton University Press, and includes more than 250 photographs.

Admission is free. This exhibition is organized by the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.

Public Programs

Thursday, March 27, 6 p.m.

Gallery Talk

Why are snapshot photographs being displayed with increasing regularity in fine art museums? Does this trend reflect a lowering of museum standards or a changed definition of art? Rohrbach will address these and related issues in a walk-through of The Art of the American Snapshot, 1888-1978.

For further information contact: Amon Carter Museum, 3501 Camp Bowie Blvd., (817) 989-5066, FAX: (817) 989-5079, Website: www.cartermuseum.org Or Email: Carol Noel, Public Relations Coordinator, carol.noel@cartermuseum.org

Paintings and Sculpture

The Carter’s second-floor galleries feature masterpieces of 19th- and 20th-century American painting and sculpture. Among the riches of the paintings collection are 19th-century landscapes by Hudson River school painters; trompe-l’oeil still lifes; fine examples of American impressionism and modernism; early scenes of the West by John Mix Stanley and Albert Bierstadt; and many memorable New Mexico paintings by Georgia O’Keeffe.

For further information contact: Amon Carter Museum, 3501 Camp Bowie Blvd., (817) 989-5066, FAX: (817) 989-5079, Website: www.cartermuseum.org Or Email: Carol Noel, Public Relations Coordinator, carol.noel@cartermuseum.org

Remington and Russell

The Carter’s first-floor galleries feature displays of Amon G. Carter Sr.’s collection of works by the two greatest artists of the American West—Frederic Remington and Charles M. Russell. The Carter’s holdings by these two artists are recognized as the finest and most comprehensive in the world.

For further information contact: Amon Carter Museum, 3501 Camp Bowie Blvd., (817) 989-5066, FAX: (817) 989-5079, Website: www.cartermuseum.org Or Email: Carol Noel, Public Relations Coordinator, carol.noel@cartermuseum.org