The Amon Carter Museum Remembers Will Barnet's 100th Birthday

Written by Talia Winterman Friday, 09 September 2011 23:20

Fort Worth. TX.— The Amon Carter Museum of American Art is pleased to present "Will Barnet: Relationships, Intimate and Abstract, 1935–1965", on view at the museum until December 31st. To mark the 100th birthday of pioneering printmaker, painter, and educator Will Barnet (b. 1911), this exhibition of nearly fifty works explores the momentous evolution of Barnet’s art from realism to abstraction during the middle decades of the twentieth century. Will Barnet’s career began in 1931, when he earned a scholarship to the prestigious Art Students League in New York. Here he excelled at various printmaking techniques including lithography, intaglio, and woodcut. In 1935 he was the youngest person to ever be appointed League Printer. A year later he began teaching graphic arts at the League, then composition and painting, initiating his nearly half-century career as one of America’s most important educators.

He taught at Cooper Union, the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, Yale and Cornell universities, and many other schools, influencing multiple generations of American artists. His notable students include Robert Blackburn, Donald Judd, James Rosenquist, Mark Rothko, and Cy Twombly. Through primarily prints and drawings, but also paintings, viewers can witness the sophisticated progression of Barnet’s art from the 1930s to the 1960s, the most pivotal period of his career. The artist’s stylistic evolution was marked by his search for the symbolic potential of forms, a search that culminated in one of the most important abstract paintings he ever created, the Amon Carter’s 'Self-Portrait' (1952–53). Alongside this masterwork are related drawings from the 1950s that are being exhibited for the first time. This exhibition also includes important loans from the artist along side prints and drawings from the museum’s holdings.

The Amon Carter Museum was established through the generosity of Amon G. Carter Sr. (1879–1955) to house his collection of paintings and sculpture by Frederic Remington and Charles M. Russell; to collect, preserve, and exhibit the finest examples of American art; and to serve an educational role through exhibitions, publications, and programs devoted to the study of American art. Designed by Philip Johnson, the Amon Carter Museum of American Art opened to the public in January 1961. From the beginning, the museum was intended to be a vibrant institution; not only would it house Mr. Carter’s collection of works by Remington and Russell, it would expand to encompass a broader range of American art. The museum began to acquire important works of art in various media–paintings, sculpture, works on paper, photographs, and books–by many noted artists working in various styles and depicting a range of subjects and forms. In the 1970s, the museum commissioned photographer Richard Avedon (1923–2004) to create what would become the groundbreaking body of work In the American West. Other major works acquired for the collection include "Idle Hours" by William Merritt Chase, "Flags on the Waldorf" by Childe Hassam and "Red Cannas" by Georgia O’Keeffe.

On the occasion of its fortieth anniversary the Amon Carter underwent a major expansion. Again designed by Johnson–making the building as a whole a singular example of his work–the museum now has gallery space to accommodate the full breadth of its permanent collection. With its expansive galleries for traveling exhibitions, there are today some 600 works of art on view at any given time. A 160-seat auditorium is available for programs, and the library of 50,000 volumes is the only research facility between the two coasts to house the 7,500 microform reels of the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution. The museum also houses one of the preeminent collections of American photography, and the expansion resulted in climate-controlled vaults (for both cool and cold storage) and a state-of-the-art conservation center, made possible in part by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Visit the museum's website at ... http://www.cartermuseum.org

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