The Amon Carter Museum of American Art will close on June 3 for renovations. The museum is scheduled to reopen Sept. 14. The museum has been making repairs since October 2018, and aims for a “total transformation of the visitor experience at the Carter,” according to a press release. The makeover targets everything from the first floor to the upper galleries, and even the Carter campus itself.
The purposes of these renovations is to make gallery layouts more configurable, add hardwood floors to the upper galleries and to make the campus and entrance more accessible. Members-only events will allow members to experience the new Carter prior to the official reopening. The Sep. 14 reopening will include a daylong event featuring live music and food trucks. Guests will have the opportunity to browse five brand new exhibitions starting on the 14th, featuring works from Gordon Parks, Camille Utterback and more.
Read the full press release below.
Gordon Parks (1912–2006)
Grain Boat taking on a load of wheat, Port Arthur, Ontario, Canada,, October 1945
gelatin silver print
George Eastman Museum, gift of Standard Oil Company, Courtesy of and copyright The Gordon Parks Foundation
The Amon Carter Museum of American Art Announces
Fall 2019 Exhibition Schedule
Opening September 2019: Five Exhibitions and Installations Featuring Work by Gordon Parks, Camille Utterback, Justin Favela, Scott and Stuart Gentling, and James Surls
The Museum Will Reopen on September 14 Following Three Months of Closure with a
Daylong Party on the Porch Celebration from 10 a.m. – 10 p.m.
Fort Worth, TX, May 21, 2019 — The Amon Carter Museum of American Art announces its fall exhibition schedule and plans for free reopening events this September following three months of closure for expansive renovations. The museum will reopen with nearly two weeks of members-only preview days prior to our grand reopening for the public on September 14. Everyone will be able to experience the renovated galleries, the reimagined installation of the collection, our fall exhibitions and the revamped plaza providing much-improved accessibility to our main entrance. The September 14 community celebration begins at 10 a.m. with a daylong event during our annual Party on the Porch featuring live music, food trucks, and cash bars.
On June 3, 2019, the museum building and galleries will close to the public to complete the building-enhancement project that began in October 2018. During the summer, renovations will extend from the upper galleries to the museum’s first floor and campus, culminating in the total transformation of the visitor experience at the Carter.
“We are entering the beginning of a historic period of change at the museum. Through the support of our community, we are able to change the way our visitors experience our collection and our iconic building,” said Andrew J. Walker, Executive Director. “We are excited to reopen our doors this fall and introduce the new Carter to our community through fun events and great art.”
The combined results of the renovation will be significant. All the gallery spaces will have been enhanced with new sightlines, moveable walls for highly configurable layouts, state-of-the-art lighting and hardwood flooring throughout the upstairs galleries. The photography vaults have been expanded to allow for decades of future collection growth and to preserve these holdings with the latest advances in climate control. And finally, our main campus and front entrance will feature increased accessibility. Through this enhancement project, the Carter is changing the way people experience American creativity and opening our doors still wider to welcome old friends and new audiences to one of the country’s great holdings of American art.
“Through our new installation – which aims to be elegant, dynamic and thought-provoking – the collection will sing in ways it never has before,” said Brett Abbott, Director of Collections and Exhibitions. “The museum is poised to inspire more people more deeply in the years ahead, and I look forward to sharing the new galleries with our community.”
The new galleries will showcase the permanent collection, with engaging thematic installations that draw connections between the historical collection and contemporary works by American artists. In the enlarged special exhibition space, where the museum features traveling exhibitions, visitors can see the major exhibition Gordon Parks: The New Tide, Early Work 1940–1950, chronicling the formative beginnings of Parks’ extensive and groundbreaking career. Additional exhibitions in the new space include Set in Motion: Camille Utterback and Art That Moves, an interactive digital installation presented in conversation with works by prominent female artists in the Carter’s collection and private collections; Puente Nuevo by Justin Favela, a site-specific commission by Las Vegas-based artist Justin Favela; Seeing in Detail: Scott and Stuart Gentling’s Birds of Texas, featuring the collaborative watercolor series of Texas birds by these beloved Fort Worth artists; and Seven and Seven Flower, a large-scale sculpture by Texas artist James Surls. Carter members will be the first to see these exhibitions and the newly renovated Carter with members-only hours and events Tuesday, September 3 through Friday, September 13 (the museum will be closed on Monday, September 9).
On Saturday, September 14, the museum will reopen to the public with an extended celebration of our fifth annual Party on the Porch from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. Beginning at 10 a.m., visitors are invited to explore the museum’s new galleries and exhibitions, and to participate in an array of new programming including art-making in the galleries, themed self-guided tours and a Family Pop-up Space. Celebrations continue outdoors beginning at 6 p.m. with live music, local food trucks and more. Stay tuned for the lineup to be announced this summer.
FEATURED EXHIBITIONS
Gordon Parks (1912–2006)
Anacostia, D.C. Frederick Douglass housing project. Mother watching her children as she prepares the evening meal, June 1942
gelatin silver print
Photography Collection, Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs, The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations, Courtesy of and copyright The Gordon Parks Foundation
Gordon Parks: The New Tide, Early Work 1940-1950
September 14 – December 29, 2019
Organized by the National Gallery of Art, Washington, in collaboration with The Gordon Parks Foundation, this exhibition explores the early years of Parks’ career as an influential photographer who captured the essence of the civil rights movement in addition to breaking barriers for African Americans. Through some 150 photographs, as well as rare magazines, newspapers, pamphlets and books, the exhibition offers an expansive and intimate look at how this pioneering African American artist became one of the most influential photographers of the 20th century.
Casimiro Castro (1826–1889)
Puente del Atoyac, 1877
chromolithograph
Amon Carter Museum of American Art, Fort Worth, Texas
September 14, 2019 – June 30, 2020
The museum commissioned contemporary artist Justin Favela to create an immersive installation exclusively for the Carter. Based in Las Vegas, Favela draws on his own Mexican and Guatemalan heritage to reinterpret art work from the past using massive amounts of cut tissue paper – the same material used to construct piñatas. Favela will cover the walls of our gallery with his own murals inspired by works in our collection, including nineteenth-century color lithographs of Mexico, and will create a sculptural tissue-paper tribute to the museum’s mobile Untitled (ca. 1942) by Alexander Calder. His work bridges past and present and creates connections across cultures, bringing dynamic color, energy and fun to the museum experience.
Stuart Gentling (1942–2006)
Scott Gentling (1942–2011)
Audubon’s or Crested Caracara, May 20, 1984
graphite, opaque and transparent watercolor
© Amon Carter Museum of American Art
Amon Carter Museum of American Art, Fort Worth, Texas, Gift of the Fort Worth Museum of Science and History, 2018.9
Seeing in Detail: Scott and Stuart Gentling’s Birds of Texas
September 14 – December 1, 2019
When you view Scott and Stuart Gentling’s watercolors of Texas birds, you’ll want to get close. The level of detail is extraordinary—hundreds of brushstrokes for each feather, and there are hundreds of feathers. Seeing in Detail features 23 of Scott and Stuart’s watercolors from the museum’s permanent collection. It’s the first of two consecutive exhibitions at the Carter dedicated to these Fort Worth artists and their unique approach to painting the natural world.
Camille Utterback
Untitled 5, 2004
interactive installation
Courtesy the artist
Set in Motion: Camille Utterback and Art That Moves
September 14 – December 8, 2019
This exhibition pairs an interactive installation by new-media artist Camille Utterback with a century of art depicting motion from the Carter’s collection. In Utterback’s Untitled 5 (2004), visitors’ movements in the gallery space are run through computer software written by the artist that translates them into an animated digital painting that constantly evolves. Although thoroughly contemporary, Untitled 5 builds on a rich lineage of artwork that records or transforms human movement, including the abstract expressionists Utterback considers her forbearers. Set in Motion includes a selection of work by women who experimented to pursue this difficult goal, from well-known masters like Georgia O’Keeffe and Helen Frankenthaler to underappreciated artists like Barbara Morgan and Anne Ryan.
James Surls (b. 1943)
Seven and Seven Flower, 1998
pine, limbs, and steel
Courtesy the artist
James Surls, Seven and Seven Flower (1998)
September 14, 2019 – through summer 2021
Upon entering the museum, visitors will have a chance to marvel at James Surls’ otherworldly sculpture Seven and Seven Flower, a complex portrait of family, land and self. The acclaimed Texas artist transformed pine and steel into writhing blossoms suspended in space to evoke a dynamic relationship between the earthly and the spiritual. Seven and Seven Flower directly connects to the museum’s collection of twentieth-century sculpture yet transcends time as a universal expression of ethereal beauty.
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