Fort Worth Circle artists on display at Amon Carter Museum

by Steve Smith of West and Clear

For those of you who are fans of Texas Modernism and Texas regional art, you probably already know about the Amon Carter Museum’s new show called Intimate Modernism: Fort Worth Circle Artists in the 1940s.

This exhibition features the works of such well-known local artists as Bror Utter, Dickson Reeder, Cynthia Brants and Kelly Fearing. This will be the first time in more than 20 years that a major body of work by the Fort Worth Circle has been on view in one place.

I was fortunate enough to spend some time recently with exhibit organizers Scott Grant Barker, cultural historian, and Jane Myers, senior curator of prints and drawings for the Amon Carter Museum. They even let me bring my camera. If you have six minutes that you don’t know what to do with, watch this video about the exhibit. Then go see it. It’s a bit of Fort Worth cool you may not know about and it’s also free.

There’s also a separate Bror Utter exhibit featuring sixteen watercolors commissioned by pioneering Fort Worth preservationist Sam Cantey III during the 1950s to chronicle the rapidly disappearing early architecture of the city. These watercolors are on view through June 15. On Saturday at 11 a.m., Fort Worth historian Quentin McGown will discuss these works. Reservations are required and seats are still available. Please call (817) 989-5057 to register.

In a related note, friend of West and Clear Jana Hill from the Carter just blogged about a Bror Utter watercolor that happens to be of the downtown building that now houses the Flying Saucer. Kinda cool.