exhibitions

Past Exhibitions

Since its inagural exhibition in 1961, the Carter has mounted more than 500 exhibitions. The most recently closed exhibitions can be found below, and a comprehensive list of all past exhibitions can be found on the Exhibition History page.

June 28October 12, 2008

Revisualizing Westward Expansion: A Century of Conflict, 1800-1900

Where in the West are we? Chart your course through this group of seventeen rare nineteenth-century maps that reveal how cartography helped us find our way as a country.

June 14August 24, 2008

Marsden Hartley and the West: The Search for an American Modernism

See the Southwest through the eyes of Marsden Hartley (1877–1943), one of America’s great modernists. Organized by the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum, this exhibition features nearly forty works from Hartley’s New Mexico period (1918–24), perhaps the most overlooked facet of his career.

May 17October 26, 2008

Nell Dorr: From Everlasting to Everlasting

Experience more than fifty photographs in this first-ever comprehensive survey of the work of Nell Dorr (1893–1988), one of the most spiritual and empathetic photographic artists of the twentieth century. Dorr is known for dedicating much of her life to photographing mothers and their children.

March 8June 15, 2008

Fort Worth Landmarks in the 1950s: Watercolors by Bror Utter

Seventeen brilliant watercolors by Bror Utter (1913–1993) depict historic Fort Worth structures, some of which still stand while others were torn down many years ago. The Eddleman-McFarland House, St. Ignatius Academy, Knights of Pythias, and First National Bank are some of the buildings represented.

February 16May 11, 2008

Intimate Modernism: Fort Worth Circle Artists in the 1940s

A fascinating story of visual art and American modernism is embedded in the history of 1940s Fort Worth. This special exhibition features more than 100 paintings, watercolors, and prints created by a group of artists who were among the first to introduce progressive art to this region.

February 16April 27, 2008

The Art of the American Snapshot, 1888-1978: From the Collection of Robert E. Jackson

With the advent of George Eastman’s Kodak camera and roll film in 1888, photography became an everyday aspect of modern life. Trace the history of the snapshot in America, from the late nineteenth century up to the 1970s, in this special exhibition organized by the National Gallery of Art.

September 15, 2007January 6, 2008

Accommodating Nature: The Photographs of Frank Gohlke

Frank Gohlke (b. 1942) is one of America’s leading landscape photographers. For more than thirty years, he has taken photographs that depict how Americans build their lives within a natural world that rarely matches the pastoral ideal.

August 18, 2007July 27, 2008

100 Years of Autochrome

See a selection of photographs and other materials from the Carter’s collection that together celebrate the 100th anniversary of the autochrome, the first commercially viable color photographic process.

August 18October 14, 2007

A Sense of Place: Precisionism in America

A selection of works on paper from the Carter’s collection depict Precisionism, the style employed by Charles Demuth in his paintings in the special exhibition Chimneys and Towers: Charles Demuth’s Late Paintings of Lancaster.

August 18October 14, 2007

Chimneys and Towers: Charles Demuth's Late Paintings of Lancaster

This exhibition examines a key group of paintings from the late career of Charles Demuth (1883–1935), one of America’s preeminent twentieth-century modernist painters. The show places his works within the larger cultural context of the American avant-garde.

August 18, 2007February 10, 2008

Masterworks of American Photography

The Carter holds one of the country’s largest and most important collections of photographs. This exhibition features works from the earliest years of the medium up to the present day, grouped in categories of portraiture, still life, documentary and street photography, and landscape.

August 18, 2007February 3, 2008

With New Eyes: Exploration and the American West

Explore the contributions of the photographers who participated in the U.S. government’s surveys of the West that began in 1867, two years before the completion of the transcontinental railroad. These artists helped shape public knowledge of and opinions about the interior West.

February 17May 13, 2007

Forging an American Identity: The Art of William Ranney

Experience an exhibition of beautiful oil paintings depicting vivid scenes of western expansion within the context of American culture and history in the decade prior to the Civil War.

February 2April 8, 2007

William H. Johnson’s World on Paper

See seventy works by William H. Johnson (1901–1970) who, in only twenty years, created an extraordinary body of work that is recognized as a major achievement of American modernism.

December 16, 2006May 20, 2007

Sweet Medicine: Photographing American Indian History

Compelling images of historic sites of American Indian conflict with the U. S. government and its citizens form the core of this exhibition featuring the work of photographer Drex Brooks (b. 1952).

December 2, 2006May 20, 2007

Masterworks of American Portraiture

More than fifty works from the museum’s permanent collection examine the strong tradition of American portraiture.

October 7, 2006January 7, 2007

Audubon’s Passion

Enjoy a rare opportunity to view some of the earliest prints from John James Audubon’s double-elephant-folio prints from The Birds of America. Admission is free.

September 16, 2006January 7, 2007

Regarding the Land: Robert Glenn Ketchum and the Legacy of Eliot Porter

Experience the breathtaking beauty of landscape photography through the lenses of two of the art form’s most important color artists: Eliot Porter and Robert Glenn Ketchum.

September 2November 12, 2006

Bound for Glory: America in Color

Organized by the Library of Congress, this exhibition of seventy little-known color photographs is unique. Taken by photographers of the FSA/OWI between 1939 and 1943, the prints reveal a surprisingly vibrant world that has typically been revisited only through black-and-white images.

July 15December 3, 2006

Eye of the Beholder: Artists of the United States' War With Mexico, 1846–1848

A selection from the museum’s important collection of works depicting this war, including fourteen daguerreotypes comprising the first wartime photographs ever made, present new interpretations about the conflict.

July 1August 20, 2006

100 Great American Photographs

Some of the most artful and inspiring works in the history of photography will be on view in the Carter’s 4-600-square-foot Special Exhibition Galleries.

April 8September 23, 2006

Reinventing America: Three Modern Views on Paper

Three recent museum acquisitions—works by Edward Hopper, Joseph Stella, and John Marin—chart the artists’ transformation from drawing distinctively early nineteenth-century subject matter to creating emblems of the modern era.

February 18June 25, 2006

Exploring Sight: Young Photographers in the 1970s

Look back thirty years to when an explosion of public and museum interest in artistic photography sparked a new experimentalism among younger photographers with their craft.

February 18June 25, 2006

Focus on Photographs: Man Ray’s Électricité

See revolutionary images created by the innovative American photographer Man Ray (1890–1976), who made cameraless photographs by placing objects like toasters, light bulbs, and irons on photographic paper or film and then exposing the film or paper to light.

February 18May 28, 2006

Patterns of Progress: Bird's-Eye Views of Texas

Soar above the cities and towns of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Texas to catch a bird’s-eye view of one of the greatest periods of urban growth in Texas history.

January 7July 7, 2006

Lewis Hine: Children of Texas

These fifty-five photographs made during the fall of 1913 by sociologist-turned-photographer Lewis Hine depict child labor in Texas in the early twentieth century.

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