The Amon Carter Museum of American Art’s 2024 schedule features new takes on the permanent collection, large installations by Texas and national artists, and a reinterpretation of the American West’s portrayal in visual art.
May 12 marks the opening for two shows. The biggest for movie nerds is likely “Moving Pictures: Karl Struss and the Rise of Hollywood,” about the famous cinematographer and photographer Karl Struss. Culled from the artists’ archives, which the museum owns, and private collections, this biographical show traces his beginnings as a New York photographer close to the esteemed photographer Alfred Stieglitz to a leader in on the so-called “Golden Age” of Hollywood, winning the first Oscar winner for cinematography, for which he was nominated three more times. It runs through Aug. 25.
Houston multimedia artist Dario Robleto last displayed in Fort Worth in 2003. He returns two decades later with “Dario Robleto: The Signal.” The Signal represents the culmination of his interest in the Golden Record, the gold-plated phonograph disk containing sounds and images selected by a team at NASA to portray life on Earth to extraterrestrials. The last stop on his tour through the universe is the newly commissioned “Ancient Beacons Long for Notice,” an hour-long movie about the rare and forgotten first audio recording of warfare.
Running through May 12 is “Trespassers: James Prosek and the Texas Prairie,” with new drawings, prints and sculptures by the artist, who documented grasslands across the state for two years while contemplating their fate. It complements “Drawn to Nature,” running May 25 through Sept. 29, another permanent collection show tracing how artists portrayed nature and the environment from the 18th century to the present.
Brooklyn artist Jean Shin gets the first floor sloping gallery dedicated to artists who create site-specific installations. On display from July 13 through June 2025 will be “The Museum Body,” a textile-based “portrait” of the Museum’s staff members made from their donated garments, then separated from its seams and shaping these elements into a large-scale mural covering the floor to ceiling.
“Richard Hunt: From Paper to Metal,” another archival show, shows off works on paper created at the Tamarind Lithography Workshop by the groundbreaking Black sculptor. In 1971, Hunt became the first Black artist to get a solo show at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Here, 25 lithographs are on display for the first time. With the sculpture Untitled [Hybrid Forms], these sketches show how a sculptor intricately plans their work, and how, in turn, that artist can innovate his form. It runs from Oct. 12 through March 2, 2025.
The museum picked up two touring shows, complementing its focus on artists of color. “Cowboy,” organized by the Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA) Denver, opens Sept. 28 and runs through March 16. “Cowboy” exhibits 70 artworks by artists challenging the American West myth of white cowboys chasing Native Americans. The show fits the Carter’s reconsideration of its collection, which includes founder Amon Carter’s prized Charles M. Russell and Frederic Remington paintings and sculptures.
“Rufino Tamayo: Innovation and Experimentation” looks at the Mexican artist’s 60-year career of blending modern European art movements creating work both abstract and surreal with Mexican and Pre-Columbian symbols and themes. The show here adds an extra layer, showing how he experimented with ways to make the paintings almost sculpture-like.
The second floor galleries will be closed for maintenance through April 28. The mezzanine gallery will be temporarily closed from Feb. 13 through March 3.
source: star-telegram
