On this date in 1883, the Brooklyn Bridge, linking Brooklyn and Manhattan, was opened to traffic. German emigrant John Augustus Roebling conceived the design but did not live to see it even begin. He died from injuries sustained in an accident while overlooking the building site. His son, Washington Roebling, saw the project to completion but not without enduring his own physical problems directly due to working on this project.
Roebling used a series of wooden boxes called caissons to build his foundation for what would become the largest suspension bridge in the world. The boxes, built like an upside down barge, would be sealed watertight, floated, then pushed into position by tugs. At the proper place it would be sunk then the water pumped out while air was pumped in for the workers who were digging down to the bedrock. At the same time huge stone towers were being built on top of the caissons, helping them to sink down. Once the towers were in place the anchorages were built. These would hold up the cables and keep the roadbed from sagging. Each anchorage weighed 120,000,000 pounds. Much of the cable work was done by sailors since they had experience doing work while hanging from high masts.
This incredible structure is also the source of inspiration for many artists. No fewer than seventy works of art that directly include this structure are in our permanent collection. Oscar award winning cinematographer and photographer Karl Struss was particularly captivated by this bridge. We have thirty two photographs by this artist devoted to this historic landmark.
Karl Struss (1886-1981)
Cables--New York Skyline through Brooklyn Bridge, ca. 1910-1912
FYI…John Roebling also designed a Texas landmark. The Waco suspension bridge opened in 1869 right next to the original site of the town.
Waco Suspension Bridge. 2 January 2007. Image by Georgi Petrov.
The Amon Carter recently joined with the Botanical Research Institute of Texas to work with area students on the Great Tree Essay Writing Contest, a project focusing on area trees. Area third-graders wrote stories about trees and submitted them and one of the prizes was to read their story during a live interactive videoconference in the special exhibition gallery here at the museum. Congratulations go out to Nina Williams from Tanglewood Elementary School and Karino Gibson from Daggett Montessori School for their winning insightful stories. All of the students in Karino and Nina’s classes were asked to study and prepare questions concerning works of art that featured trees, and several students shared their questions with 31 schools from across the nation during the broadcast.
Students from Tanglewood Elementary School and Daggett Montessori School in Fort Worth, Texas, participate in an interactive video broadcast from the special exhibition galleries.
A tip of the hat goes to our newest neighbor in the Cultural District! The Botanical Research Institute of Texas will soon open its doors to the public for the first time . The new facility is LEEDS certified and ready to be an important part of Fort Worth’s educational landscape.
We recently had one of many events celebrating our fiftieth anniversary. The weather was great and allowed us to end the evening on a high note: fireworks!
Mark your calendars for another fun event. Fifty Fest will be held August 13th. Dancing, food, and fun will await you after you have a great time in the galleries learning about and making art.
Thanks to art blogger extraordinaire Tyler Green for featuring photographs from the Amon Carter's massive Eliot Porter archive in special Earth Day posts on his 3rd of May and Modern Art Notes blogs! These photographs are the perfect choice for Earth Day: Eliot Porter shot tens of thousands of ecologically-oriented landscape and bird photographs during his sixty-year career.
And to celebrate, here is an Eliot Porter photograph that he happened to take on this day in 1970, the very first Earth Day.
Eliot Porter (1901-1990), Poppy Field, Eretria, Euboea, Greece, April 22, 1970, dye imbibition print, Bequest of the artist, ©1990 Amon Carter Museum of American Art
Many of the books in the Nature Bound: Illustrated Botanical Books exhibition feature very delicate, hand-colored illustrations that require an extra level of care. The pigments in the watercolor media used to color the images are very sensitive to light. Exposure to intense light or even lower light levels over a long duration can cause the colors to fade. Though we keep the light levels quite low in the gallery, the duration of the exhibition was long enough to require that we choose new illustrations about halfway through. Early last week we rotated the images on about twenty books. We found that this was not an easy task because it required that the new images continue to work with thematic and aesthetic relationships in the exhibition. In a few cases, it also meant that our art handlers had to create new plastic cradles in order to hold the book open to the new page. But the bonus for our viewers is that they now have the good fortune to see a fresh selection of images. Many of them are at least as, if not more, stunning than the last round. Please come by and take a look!
Julian Onderdonk, A Cloudy Day, Bluebonnets near San Antonio, Texas, oil on canvas, 1918, Amon Carter Museum of American Art, Fort Worth, Texas, Purchase with funds from the Ruth Carter Stevenson.
Although the wildflower show isn't as magnificent during our dry year, the bluebonnets are still popping up all over the state. Julian Onderdonk was a Texas artist who influenced the arts in the state through his work organizing art exhibitions for the State Fair of Texas. Enjoy this lovely nod to the Texas Hill Country and think spring!
Our recent "supermoon" event had a lot of folks out on the portico of the museum photographing the great view of downtown. Museum friend David Gunn shared his photo of Claudia Camp, TCU professor, with the moon rising majestically over the Henry Moore installation on our plaza.
We had a blast with all of our Family Fun Week visitors. Lots of looking at art, talking about art, and making great art. There's one more opportunity to get in on the fun...
Join us today from 10:30 to 12:00 for Super Sculptures! See how different sculpture can be, and then create your own 3D masterpiece!
From the beginning of the museum's history, the Carter Foundation and the Carter family intended this to be a vibrant institution. Not only would the collection grow, but the mission would evolve as well. Instead of serving only as a Remington and Russell repository, the museum would expand to encompass works by other artists who depicted the American West. Within a few years this vision was modified to include American art as a whole, for the museum’s first director, Mitchell A. Wilder, believed that the history of American art could be interpreted as the history of artists working on successive frontiers. As a result, the holdings grew in fascinating ways. Wilder and the museum’s trustees realized at the outset that it was nearly impossible to assemble a comprehensive collection of America art at such a late date, so they opted for quality over quantity. One trustee, RenÃ© d’Harnoncourt, explained that the desired works should represent “stepping stones” in the history of American art, major pieces that not only revealed the high points of an artist’s career but that also summarized the essential elements of a broader artistic style. Acquisitions were not limited to paintings and sculptures. Watercolors, drawings, prints, photographs, and books have been added yearly and now the number of objects in our collection number well over a quarter-million works of art. The photography collection itself has grown to become one of the nation’s most important collections.
Dorothea Lange (1895–1965), Charles M. Russell's hand, gelatin silver print, ca. 1924-1926.
This is the first photograph acquired for the museum’s collection
The Amon Carter Museum designed by Philip Johnson (1906–2005), brought to the city of Fort Worth and to the state of Texas a new order of museum architecture. This building was to be a work of art to house art, a relationship that the critic Douglas Davis referred to as the union of the container and the contained. With the museum Johnson made four significant design statements: the axial relationship of the museum to the city, the great processional entrance way featuring the shellstone-clad portico, and the integration of the landscape forms with the building.
The museum was fortunate to have Philip Johnson design and oversee all three iterations of building and grounds. The original 1961 plan, the addition in 1977, and the current museum all were the “project of a lifetime” for this renowned architect.
When you visit the Amon Carter take a moment and look east to take in the view then travel through Mr. Johnson’s “goesinda” (one of Mr. Johnson’s favorite words), the center of the grand entrance to a grand collection of American art.