{"id":401678,"date":"2026-03-24T16:57:21","date_gmt":"2026-03-24T16:57:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/401678\/"},"modified":"2026-03-24T16:57:21","modified_gmt":"2026-03-24T16:57:21","slug":"two-shows-at-amon-carter-museum-reframe-the-western-landscape","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/401678\/","title":{"rendered":"Two shows at Amon Carter Museum reframe the Western landscape"},"content":{"rendered":"

Hung side by side in the mezzanine gallery at the Amon Carter Museum of American Art<\/a>, two thematically related exhibitions present a range of approaches to interpreting the rugged landscape of the American West \u2014 and the places that humans have carved out for themselves within it.<\/p>\n

To the left as you come up the staircase, \u201cGeorgia O\u2019Keeffe and the Carter\u201d deftly places the world-famous painter into her context, as well as providing some absorbing background on her relationship with the museum, with which she was connected from its beginnings in the early 1960s. To the right, \u201cNew Horizons: The Western Landscape\u201d presents an assortment of works by 10 contemporary artists, each offering its own spin on the titular topic, ranging from a full absorption in natural beauty to a preoccupation with human-made artifacts. The two shows complement each other and provide for many stimulating comparisons.<\/p>\n

For any longtime art lover, O\u2019Keeffe\u2019s work, particularly her paintings of red canna lilies, is so familiar that it can be a challenge to see it afresh. So for the purpose of comparison and reference, it is helpful that the show includes paintings by some of O\u2019Keeffe\u2019s peers, her fellow American modernists Marsden Hartley<\/a>, Arthur Dove<\/a> and John Marin<\/a>. All of these artists wanted to simplify their subjects into underlying forms, stripping away superficial details to reveal the core structure underneath. <\/p>\n

This approach is clearly evident in O\u2019Keeffe\u2019s New Mexico paintings depicting the San Francisco de As\u00eds Mission Church<\/a> in Taos and the Black Mesa<\/a> outside the San Ildefonso Pueblo. Eliminating everything unnecessary from the pictures, their central forms become solid, looming presences.<\/p>\n

News Roundups<\/p>\n

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\"Georgia<\/p>\n

Georgia O’Keeffe’s 1930-31 oil-on-canvas painting “Ranchos Church, New Mexico” is featured in the exhibition at the Amon Carter Museum of American Art in Fort Worth.<\/p>\n

Amon Carter Museum of American Art<\/p>\n

\"Laura<\/p>\n

Laura Gilpin’s 1953 photo of artist Georgia O’Keeffe shows the painter in her New Mexico studio.<\/p>\n

Amon Carter Museum of American Art<\/p>\n

As much as her work in painting, O\u2019Keeffe\u2019s charismatic personality contributed to making her a celebrity in her day, and the photographs of her by Alfred Stieglitz, Laura Gilpin and Todd Webb suggest something of her public appeal: She appears serious and uncompromisingly devoted to her work.<\/p>\n

Along with the paintings and photographs, the show presents correspondence showing the behind-the-scenes work that went into O\u2019Keeffe\u2019s career, planning for her home to be featured in the April 1963 issue of House Beautiful<\/a> and for a major 1966 exhibition of her work orchestrated by Mitchell Wilder, the Carter\u2019s first director, and Ruth Carter Stevenson, the museum\u2019s founder and daughter of its namesake. \u201cI enjoyed your visit \u2014 enjoyed drinking beer with you,\u201d O\u2019Keeffe wrote to Wilder during the planning process.<\/p>\n

In contrast with O\u2019Keeffe\u2019s uncompromising modernism, the contemporary artists in \u201cNew Horizons\u201d take a range of approaches, as can be seen in a comparison of works by three different Din\u00e9 (Navajo) painters in the show. While Tony Abeyta and Steven Yazzie both create intense, semiabstract works reflecting the power of nature, Craig George\u2019s thoroughly urban work is based on his upbringing in downtown Los Angeles, home to one of the largest Din\u00e9 communities outside the Navajo reservation.<\/p>\n

\"In<\/p>\n

In the “New Horizons” exhibition, paintings like Don Stinson’s 2000 work “Lone Star and Pool: Lobos, Texas” suggest the power of human determination to make a home in an unforgiving environment and the limits of that determination.<\/p>\n

Don Stinson<\/p>\n

Other painters fall somewhere in between these two poles. Oil paintings by Don Stinson and Dean Mitchell show somewhat beleaguered man-made structures surrounded by barren desert, suggesting the power of human determination to make a home in an unforgiving environment and the limits of that determination.<\/p>\n

\""American<\/p>\n

“American Icon,” a 2020 bronze bust of an American bison by sculptor Mick Doellinger, is among the exhibition’s highlights.<\/p>\n

Mick Doellinger<\/p>\n

In terms of art-world recognition, by far the most famous artist in \u201cNew Horizons\u201d is Kay WalkingStick, a member of the Cherokee Nation and professor emerita at Cornell University whose work has been shown throughout the United States and abroad since the 1960s. In her landscapes, WalkingStick combines picturesque views of the Southwest with repeated American Indian geometric motifs that appear to hover in the foreground as apparitions from another level of reality. Juxtaposing real and invented forms, WalkingStick\u2019s painting fits within the broad category of postmodernism, but it is more grounded in a specific place and culture than that of most postmodern artists. <\/p>\n

For visitors of all ages, the exhibition\u2019s showstopper is American Icon, a hulking bronze bust of an American bison by German-Australian-American sculptor Mick Doellinger. It placidly presides over the gallery as viewers circulate, suggesting what must have been the awe-inspiring scale of vast bison herds before the near-extinction of the species.<\/p>\n

What stayed in my mind after leaving the gallery is the contrast between the ancient Southwestern landscape and the comparatively brief periods of human settlement in it: one or two millennia for the Navajo and Pueblo peoples, a few centuries for the Spanish and just a few decades for the Old West of the American frontier. <\/p>\n

While the unyielding vastness of nature in this part of the world might cause some to retreat to more comfortable climates, the artists here model a different approach: an effort to come to terms with the country on a human level.<\/p>\n

\"Kay<\/p>\n

Kay WalkingStick’s 2012 oil painting “The Pecos” is featured in the “New Horizons” exhibition.<\/p>\n

Gochman Family Collection<\/p>\n

Details<\/p>\n

\u201cNew Horizons: The Western Landscape\u201d continues through May 24 and \u201cGeorgia O\u2019Keeffe and the Carter\u201d continues through September 2027 at the Amon Carter Museum of American Art, 3501 Camp Bowie Blvd., Fort Worth. Tuesdays through Saturdays from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., Thursdays from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m., and Sundays from noon to 5 p.m. Free admission. Call 817-738-1933 or visit cartermuseum.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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What to know about this year\u2019s Fleurs de Villes at the Dallas mall.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Hung side by side in the mezzanine gallery at the Amon Carter Museum of American Art, two thematically…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":401679,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[267],"tags":[365,362,363,364,366,18,117,4503,19,17,4504,12167],"class_list":["post-401678","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-arts-and-design","tag-arts","tag-arts-and-design","tag-artsanddesign","tag-artsdesign","tag-design","tag-eire","tag-entertainment","tag-fort-worth","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-museums","tag-visual-arts"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/116285213724051805","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/401678","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=401678"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/401678\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/401679"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=401678"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=401678"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=401678"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}