The Amon Carter Museum of American Art will host the first exhibition to focus on printmaking and social activism by Chicanx artists. ¡Printing the Revolution! opens on Feb. 20., one of several 2022 exhibitions that the museum announced.
Another first: a major museum survey on contemporary Indigenous photography. That show, Speaking with Light, opens in October.
Texas collector Finis Welch bequeathed 240 works to the museum, and 48 of them will be displayed in February. They include photos by Ansel Adams, Marco Breuer, Dorothea Lange, Edward Steichen and Edward Weston.
Also announced is a new outdoor sculpture program. The Carter will make full use of its outdoor campus to extend the opportunity for visitors to interact with art.
Read more about the museum’s 2022 lineup in the press release below:
Fort Worth, TX, January 13, 2022—The Amon Carter Museum of American Art (the Carter) announces its 2022 exhibition schedule, featuring major surveys organized by the Carter as well as nationally touring exhibitions. The 2022 lineup showcases a broad presentation of work from the Carter’s collections, site-specific commissions, and traveling exhibitions from notable institutions. The schedule includes the first ever exhibition to focus on the history of printmaking and social activism by Chicanx artists, as well as other exhibitions dedicated to the Carter’s strong holdings of photography and works on paper. Also included in the program is one of the first major museum surveys, organized by the Carter, on contemporary Indigenous photography.
Additionally, the Carter is launching a multiyear experimental outdoor sculpture program developed to expand opportunities for visitors to interact with art on the Museum’s grounds. Activating the Carter’s outdoor campus with art extends the experience for visitors to access the highest caliber of American art while celebrating both local and national artists of significance. Throughout the year, the Carter will present both existing and new work by North Texas-based artists Justin Ginsberg and Darryl Lauster, together with work by New York–based artist Jean Shin, that engage the Carter’s grounds in new ways.
Exhibitions premiering in 2022 include:
Stephanie Syjuco: Double Vision
January 15, 2022–January 2023
Stephanie Syjuco: Double Vision presents a commissioned, site-specific installation by the artist that uses digital editing and excavation of the Museum’s archives to transform images of renowned works from the Carter’s collection to reconsider mythologies of the American West. Reframing iconic works by American artists, including Albert Bierstadt and Frederic Remington, Syjuco’s work highlights the constructed nature of historical narratives and reveals how these works and their presentation can perpetuate colonial lore.
¡Printing the Revolution!: The Rise and Impact of Chicano Graphics, 1965 to Now
February 20–May 8, 2022
In the 1960s, activist Chicano artists forged a remarkable history of printmaking that remains vital today. ¡Printing the Revolution!, organized by the Smithsonian American Art Museum, explores the rise of Chicano graphics within these early social movements and the ways in which artists since then have advanced innovative printmaking practices attuned to social justice. The exhibition includes 119 works, ranging from traditional screenprints and digital graphics to augmented reality works and site-specific installations, by more than 74 artists of Mexican descent and other artists who were active in Chicanx networks.
Beauty and Life: The Finis Welch Collection
February 20–May 8, 2022
This exhibition features newly acquired photographs by Ansel Adams, Marco Breuer, Dorothea Lange, Edward Steichen, Edward Weston, and more, on view for the first time at the Carter. Beauty and Life showcases 48 artworks from a collection of over 240 photographs and works on paper bequeathed to the Carter by Texas collector Finis Welch. The gift significantly expands the Museum’s already renowned collection of photography and enhances its ability to tell the story of early photographic modernism in America.
Art Making as Life Making: Kinji Akagawa at Tamarind
April 23–October 30, 2022
Art Making as Life Making: Kinjia Akagawa at Tamarind offers a behind-the-scenes glimpse of life in a 1960s print workshop. At the age of twenty-five, Akagawa embarked on a fellowship to train as a printer at the Tamarind Lithography Workshop in Los Angeles. While there, Akagawa collaborated with more than a dozen leading artists, including Ruth Asawa, Herbert Bayer, and Jose Luis Cuevas, printing their lithographs and creating his own editions of prints. The communal environment at Tamarind had a profound impact on his philosophies of art, in which he embraced dialogue, collaboration, and co-creation as pillars of a democratic vision of art. The exhibition features more than 40 works from the Carter’s collection of more than 2,500 Tamarind Workshop prints.
Darryl Lauster: Testament
May 7, 2022–May 2023
North Texas–based artist Darryl Lauster’s Testament (2018– 20) will inaugurate a series of outdoor creative projects implemented by the Carter. Through the examination of America’s past and present, Lauster’s bronze obelisk calls for the viewer to be a critical reader of information and to look at the function of text in different contexts. Testament combines pop culture references with quotes from primarily U.S. foundational documents bringing to question what we know about our nation’s history and promises.
Justin Ginsberg: Shaking the Shadow
June 11–September 25, 2022
Over the course of the summer, Texas-based artist Justin Ginsberg will create a glass sculptural work inspired in part by the Sargent, Whistler, and Venetian Glass exhibition (see below). Ginsberg will work with a glass kiln set up on the Museum’s lawn each weekend, pulling glass threads measuring up to 30 feet in length. At the end of each glassmaking session, Ginsberg will install the threads he has created in the Carter’s Main Gallery, resulting in a large-scale glass “waterfall” sculpture. The public will be able to watch Ginsberg at work during his weekend sessions as well as witness the multi-month realization of his site-specific installation.
Black Every Day: Photographs from the Carter Collection
June 11–September 11, 2022
Exploring more than 100 years of photographic representations of Black American experiences, Black Every Day: Photographs from the Carter Collection includes over fifty historical and contemporary art photographs and over 100 vernacular images. Works by iconic artists including Henri Cartier-Bresson, Roy DeCarava, Dorothea Lange, Deana Lawson, Gordon Parks, and Garry Winogrand, as well as unidentified community members, showcase the everyday moments of Black life, addressing themes of community, excellence, family, and labor.
Sargent, Whistler, and Venetian Glass: American Artists and the Magic of Murano
June 26–September 11, 2022
This exhibition features more than 140 artworks by 19th-century American artists, including John Singer Sargent and James McNeill Whistler, presented alongside rarely seen Venetian glass mosaic portraits and glass cups, vases, and urns by the leading glassmakers of Murano, including members of the legendary Seguso, Barovier, and Moretti families. Organized by the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Sargent, Whistler, and Venetian Glass: American Artists and the Magic of Murano brings to life the Venetian glass revival between 1860 and 1915 and the artistic experimentation the city inspired for visiting artists.
Faces from the Interior: The Native American Portraits of Karl Bodmer
October 30, 2022–January 22, 2023
Organized by and drawn exclusively from the collection of the Joslyn Art Museum (Omaha, Nebraska), Faces from the Interior features over 60 recently conserved watercolors including portraits of individuals from the Omaha, Ponca, Yankton, Lakota, Mandan, Hidatsa, Assiniboine, and Blackfoot nations. Contemporary Indigenous knowledge bearers, artists, and scholars from the nations that Bodmer and his companion, German prince Maximilian zu Wied-Neuwied, visited between 1832 and 1834 have contributed texts and four short films for this exhibition, which together highlight the diverse histories, beliefs, and practices embodied in the portraits.
Speaking with Light: Contemporary Indigenous Photography
October 30, 2022–January 22, 2023
Speaking with Light: Contemporary Indigenous Photography highlights the dynamic ways that Indigenous artists have leveraged their lenses over the past three decades to reclaim representation and affirm their existence, perspectives, and trauma. The exhibition, organized by the Carter, is one of the first major museum surveys to explore this important transition, featuring works by more than 30 Indigenous artists. Through approximately 80 photographs, videos, three-dimensional works, and digital activations, the exhibition forges a mosaic investigation into identity, resistance, and belonging.
Charles Truett Williams: The Art of the Scene
November 5, 2022–May 7, 2023
This exhibition examines the Fort Worth mid-century art scene through the presentation of more than 30 works by Fort Worth artist Charles Truett Williams and the artistic community drawn to his studio salon. Accompanying the works on paper and sculptures are ephemera from the recently acquired archives of Williams, enhancing the Carter’s strong holding of artist archives. Charles Truett Williams: The Art of the Scene is the continuation of the Museum’s research into the artistic legacy of underrepresented artists as part of the Gentling Study Center’s mission.
Jean Shin
November 2022–November 2023
Known for her signature artistic practice of creating monumental sculpture created from natural or discarded materials, Shin will be creating a site-specific work on the Carter grounds that examines the Museum’s history and landscape. Nationally recognized for her sculptures that transform large accumulations of singular objects frequently sourced through donations, such as computer keyboard parts, glass bottles, and clothing items, Shin will develop a functional artwork that reflects the Museum’s past and present through an elegant expression of identity and community.
Images (left to right): Leonard Castellanos, RIFA, from Méchicano 1977 Calendario, 1976, screenprint on paperboard, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Museum purchase through the Luisita L. and Franz H. Denghausen Endowment, 2012.53.1, © 1976 Leonard Castellanos; John Singer Sargent (1856-1925), A Venetian Woman, 1882, oil on canvas, Cincinnati Art Museum, The Edwin and Virginia Irwin Memorial, 1972.37; Wendy Red Star (b. 1981), Catalogue Number 1941.30.1, 2019, inkjet print, Amon Carter Museum of American Art, Fort Worth, Texas, P2020.166.5, © Wendy Red Star; Stephanie Syjuco (b. 1974), Set-up (The Broncho Buster), 2021, inkjet print, courtesy of the artist, RYAN LEE Gallery, and Catharine Clark Gallery; Ansel Adams (1902–1984), Monolith, the Face of Half Dome, 1927, gelatin silver print Amon Carter Museum of American Art, Fort Worth, Texas, Bequest of Finis Welch, P2021.46.8, © The Ansel Adams Publishing Rights Trust; Kinji Akagawa (b. 1940), Play the Piano, 1965, lithograph. Amon Carter Museum of American Art, Fort Worth, Texas, Gift of Ruth Carter Stevenson, 1970.296, © 1965 Kinji Akagawa; Gordon Parks (1912-2006), Red Jackson with His Mother and Brother, Harlem, New York, 1948, gelatin silver print, Amon Carter Museum of American Art, Fort Worth, Texas, P1998.33, © The Gordon Parks Foundation
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.
COMMENTS