Museum news

Oscar-winning cinematographer nabs spotlight on Carter museum's 2024 season

Amon Carter Museum of American Art presents Moving Pictures: Karl Struss and the Rise of Hollywood

"Moving Pictures: Karl Struss and the Rise of Hollywood" opens at the Carter on May 12.

Photo by Karl Struss

Fort Worth's Amon Carter Museum of American Art is rolling out the red carpet for a new season of exhibitions that begins with an Oscar winner.

Lauded photographer and cinematographer Karl Struss, who won the first Oscar for cinematography, gets his own multimedia exhibition in May. Debuting at the Carter the same day will be the final film in a trilogy of work by interdisciplinary Houston-based artist Dario Robleto.

Fittingly, the Carter (named for Amon Carter, the man who famously said, "Fort Worth is where the west begins") also will include a touring exhibition of contemporary artists’ re-examination of the cowboy in American culture.

Another can't-miss display? A textile-based sculptural installation created by artist Jean Shin from the clothing of museum staff members.

According to a release, much of the 2024 exhibition schedule is made up of works from the museum's extensive artist archives, along with highlights from the Carter’s works on paper collection, and new work by living artists.

Here is the complete schedule of 2024 exhibitions (with descriptions quoted from the museum's press release).

Moving Pictures: Karl Struss and the Rise of Hollywood
May 12-August 25, 2024
"The museum presents a multimedia examination of photographer and cinematographer Karl Struss’ career, focusing on his transition from fine art photography to the world of moving pictures. Featuring archival materials, original film, and over 100 photographs from the Carter’s extensive Struss Artist Archive and supplemental loans, the exhibition spotlights his innovations in image making and contributions to the film industry, closely examining his impact on Hollywood’s Golden Age and the field of cinematography at large.

'Moving Pictures' brings into focus Struss’ unique position as a leader in both still and moving photography, tracing his career from New York, where he was elected to Alfred Stieglitz’s Photo-Secession group in 1910, to Los Angeles, where he moved in 1919 in the wake of World War I, commencing a defining era of his career and joining the wave of westward migration by Americans eager for a fresh start."

Dario Robleto: The Signal
May 12-October 27, 2024
"Internationally celebrated Texas artist Dario Robleto’s solo exhibition Dario Robleto: The Signal debuts at the Carter. Known for his multidisciplinary, research-driven approach, Robleto’s work probes questions about the order of the universe and the human-made systems we employ to perceive and describe it.

Spanning film, sculpture, and works on paper, The Signal represents the culmination of Robleto’s multiyear exploration of 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. Supported by related sculptures and works on paper, the centerpiece of the exhibition is Robleto’s newly commissioned work Ancient Beacons Long for Notice, an immersive, sixty-minute film based on the approved contents of the Record and the choice to exclude from the record a rare and forgotten document — the first audio recording of warfare."

Amon Carter Museum of American Art presents Dario Robleto: "The Signal" Photo courtesy of Dario Robleto

Drawn to Nature
May 25-September 29, 2024
"This exhibition, organized by the Carter, highlights the Museum’s works on paper holdings from the 18th through the 21st centuries. Celebrating both historical and modernist artworks, the exhibition presents depictions of nature from the first investigations of the American landscape by European American artists to modernism’s use of up-close observation of nature as a way of rendering the real world through abstraction.

With work by artists including Ruth Asawa, John James Audubon, Thomas Moran, and Sandy Rodriguez, the exhibition explores botanical and zoological beauty in all of its minute complexity while celebrating the Carter’s collection."

Jean Shin: The Museum Body
July 13, 2024-June 2025
"Jean Shin is transforming one of the Museum’s first-floor gallery spaces with a site-specific installation in which she will create a textile-based “portrait” of the Museum’s staff members, both those visible and invisible to the general public, who enable a museum to function.

The installation, done in her signature artistic practice of massive scale and evocative use of found items, will consist of donated garments intended to represent the collective work of the people within the institution. Separating the fabric from its seams, Shin will shape these elements into a large-scale wall mural with immersive hanging elements that will activate the gallery walls and ceiling. The Museum Body is a reiteration and expansion of Cut Outs and Suspended Seams (2004), a project presented by Shin twenty years ago at the Museum of Modern Art QNS."

Cowboy
September 28, 2024-March 16, 2025
"This exhibitionbrings together approximately 70cutting-edge modern and contemporary artworks, including new commissions, from more than 25 artists including Asian American, Latino, and Indigenous perspectives, all re-examining the significance of cowboy imagery in American culture.

Cowboy, organized by the Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA) Denver, aims to shift the narrative of this figure’s cultural power and significance to be both historically accurate and creatively imaginative. The exhibition reexamines the legend and lore of the cowboy through a new lens, exploring how the myth of the cowboy exists today. Works on view represent a range of perspectives and explore a wide array of themes, including the cowboy’s role in shaping our perception of masculinity and gender, as well as long-held assumptions about cowboys’ relationship to land and the way these assumptions come into conflict with the lived experiences of contemporary cowboys."

Amon Carter Museum of American Art presents "Cowboy" Photo courtesy of Amon Carter Museum of American Art

Richard Hunt: From Paper to Metal
October 12, 2024-March 2, 2025
"Organized by the Carter and drawn from the Museum’s holdings of Richard Hunt’s Tamarind Lithography Workshop prints, Richard Hunt: From Paper to Metal highlights the works on paper by one of the most illustrious and prolific sculptors of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Hunt was the first Black artist to receive a retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, in 1971. He has created over 150 public sculptures across the country, and his work is in numerous institutions.

From Paper to Metal examines the artist’s interests outside of the sculptural form. Featuring 25 lithographs from 1965 which have never been on view, the exhibition explores the spatial and figurative ideas Hunt executed in his Tamarind work, which informed the sole sculpture included in the exhibition, Untitled [Hybrid Forms], highlighting the transformation of 2D graphic ideas to the 3D direct-welded sculptural technique."

Richard Howard Hunt (1935-2023), Untitled [Hybrid Form], 1968.Photo courtesy of Amon Carter Museum of American Art

Rufino Tamayo: Innovation and Experimentation
November 24, 2024-April 20, 2025
"Exploring more than 60 years of Rufino Tamayo’s prints, Rufino Tamayo: Innovation and Experimentation showcases the artist’s extensive engagement with prints and his ambitions to add volume and texture to a traditionally two-dimensional medium. In these works, Tamayo's depictions and abstractions of the human figure are highlighted as fertile ground for formal experimentation.

A selection of Mesoamerican sculpture complements the prints on view, examining an important source of inspiration for the artist. The exhibition, organized by and drawn exclusively from the collection of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, considers Tamayo’s longstanding interest in prints as a means of probing new techniques and furthering artistic investigation."

For more information, visit the museum's website.

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Ancient Sculpture News

Fort Worth museum one of only 3 in U.S. to get rare sculpture exhibit

Lorenzo di Masi/Torlonia Collection

The Torlonia Nile

A major exhibition of ancient Roman masterworks is coming to the U.S. for the first time to be viewed at only three museums — including the Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth.

Called Myth and Marble: Ancient Roman Sculpture from the Torlonia Collection, it's an assemblage of works stewarded by the Torlonia Family beginning in the early-19th century, and will be installed at the Kimbell from September 14, 2025 – January 25, 2026.

As part of the Foundation’s mission to showcase these historical works to the public, the exhibition will premiere at the Art Institute of Chicago on March 15 through June 29, before traveling to the Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth. Its third stop will be at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, from March 14 - July 19, 2026.

The Torlonia Collection was established during the course of the 19th century by the Franco-Italian banker Prince Giovanni Torlonia and his son Alessandro, then handed down over generations, eventually growing into the largest private collection of ancient Roman sculptures.

Today, the Torlonia Foundation represents the culmination of the Family’s continued passion for art. Created at the behest of Prince Alessandro Torlonia (1925–2017), the Foundation’s mission is to preserve and promote the Torlonia Collection and Villa Albani Torlonia.

In 1876, Prince Alessandro Torlonia (1800-1886) created a museum to house and exhibit the Family’s holdings, which was open to small groups until its closure at the onset of World War II. The sculptures remained unseen by the public from that time until the Foundation’s first exhibition at the Musei Capitolini in Rome in 2020. That was followed by a stint at the Louvre, the first presentation of the collection outside of Rome, where it has drawn more than 600,000 visitors to date, an unprecedented feat.

The exhibit
The curators of Myth & Marble: Ancient Roman Sculpture from the Torlonia Collection are Lisa Ayla Çakmak and Katharine A. Raff of the Art Institute of Chicago. The exhibition is co-organized by the Art Institute of Chicago and the Torlonia Foundation, in collaboration with the Kimbell Art Museum, the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, and The Museum Box. All of the sculptures in the exhibition have been restored by the Foundation with the support of Bvlgari.

The exhibition is accompanied by a catalogue co-published by the Art Institute of Chicago and the Torlonia Foundation, edited by Lisa Ayla Çakmak and Katharine A. Raff, with essays by Silvia Beltrametti and Salvatore Settis.

The North American presentation will feature 58 highlights from the Torlonia Collection, including 24 newly restored works that have not been on view in nearly a century. The sculptures date from approximately the 5th century BCE to the early 4th century CE, with the majority of the works dating to the High Imperial period (1st–2nd centuries CE). Highlights include examples of the most emblematic genres of ancient marble sculpture, acquired by the Torlonia Family from the most prominent collections of Rome’s patrician families, as well as from excavations made on the Family’s own estates throughout Italy.

“The Foundation is excited to be sharing the Torlonia Collection with audiences in North America for the first time. This exceptional group of ancient sculptures is a testament to the enduring cultural legacy of ancient Rome, as well as the vision and passion of multiple generations of the Torlonia Family,” said Alessandro Poma Murialdo, President of the Torlonia Foundation.

The presentation is organized thematically in six sections, featuring sculptures found on the Torlonia Family’s properties in Rome and the surrounding suburbs and their estate in Porto, Portugal, as well as a number of exceptional sarcophagi (stone coffins), among the largest sculpted works in marble to survive from ancient Rome.

The tour reinforces the work of the Foundation to advance the appreciation and understanding of this unparalleled collection and the rich cultural heritage it represents. The Foundation’s mission is carried out through a continuous joint effort between the public and private sectors, including with the cooperation of the Italian Ministry of Culture. The Foundation is supported by a longstanding collaboration with Bvlgari as the principal sponsor of the restoration project since its inception in Rome and throughout the global tour, and Chiomenti, who has lent invaluable support to the Foundation’s core activities.

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