The Amon Carter Museum of American Art will present the first institutional retrospective of the artist Robert Bergman (b. 1944). The exhibition follows the Museum’s acquisition of 51 portraits featured in Bergman's 1998 monograph, "A Kind of Rapture," made possible by a gift from philanthropist and art collector J. Tomilson Hill.

"Fortune of the Spirit" presents a broad selection of works from the major series throughout the artist's career and showcases Bergman's color street portraits, many of which will be on view for the first time, alongside his rarely seen early street photographs and career-spanning abstractions. Bergman’s photographs capture his subjects with an extraordinary intimacy afforded by removing elements of distance and foregoing identification through titles or labels, inviting viewers to participate directly in the exchange between subject and viewer.

Bringing together 65 works, "Fortune of the Spirit" offers an extensive look into Bergman’s six-decade-long career, beginning with his early black-and-white street photographs of people and details around the artist’s hometown of Minneapolis as well as other locations including Chicago, Florida, Georgia, Indianapolis, New Orleans, and New York, which are emblematic of his early explorations of the human psyche.

The exhibition then presents two never-before-seen works from the 1970s that reflect Bergman’s early experiments with abstraction. At the exhibition’s core are the intimate portraits captured between 1985 and 1997 during Bergman’s travels east of the Mississippi River. These meticulously composed works mark the artist’s transition from black and white to the use of vivid, painterly color and a new commitment to close-up portraiture. Employing this close-range perspective, Bergman removes most visual context and setting, leaving viewers confronted with the raw presence of the subject and challenging assumptions about composing photographs in an urban environment.