Explore the vibrant world of art and photography this summer with the Amarillo Museum of Art’s three newest exhibitions, now on view.
This summer, the Amarillo Museum of Art invites you to experience the vibrant cultural landscape of Amarillo, Texas, and beyond, with its newest exhibitions.
Photography is Art
now on view
Art museums have not always embraced photography. One of the earliest museum efforts to define the medium’s contribution to the arts came in the mid-1930s, when New York’s Museum of Modern Art asked its librarian, Beaumont Newhall, to create an exhibition survey of photographic history. Relishing the challenge but unclear on how to shape his show, Newhall reached out to photographers, picture editors, cinematographers, and even scientists for advice. He then organized his display around technical advances in the medium. That 1937 show led to a twenty-five-year debate inside MoMA over whether to treat photographs as works of personal expression on par with painting, or as vibrant, easily reproducible tools for communication and persuasion. Gradually, the argument for personal expression won out, though only in the late 1970s and early 1980s did many museums subscribe to that stance and begin actively collecting and displaying photographs.
Photography is Art was originally organized by the Amon Carter Museum of American Art with objects from the Carter’s expansive photography collection. The current presentation was reconceived as a team project with the Amarillo Museum of Art, Art Museum of South Texas, and Ellen Noël Art Museum. The artworks tell a story of American photographers’ efforts, from the late 19th century on, to explore and proclaim photography’s artfulness, and how broad acceptance of that perspective has since affected their practices. This exhibition reveals how often photographers have looked to painting for reference and ideas even as they shaped their medium’s own artistic language.
This is one in a series of American art exhibitions created through a multi-year, multi-institutional partnership formed by the Amon Carter Museum of American Art as part of the Art Bridges Cohort Program.
Cadillac Ranch at 50
on view through August 25, 2024
The Cadillac Ranch is an iconic American art installation and destination that was first installed in 1974. It was created by Chip Lord, Hudson Marquez, and Doug Michels, who formed the art collective known as Ant Farm. This exhibition celebrates the transformation of the Cadillac Ranch over the past fifty years. Included in the exhibition are photographs by Wyatt McSpadden, who has documented the Cadillacs since the project’s inception, as well as video works and ephemera from Ant Farm member Chip Lord.
Swoon
on view through August 11, 2024
Caledonia Curry, aka Swoon, is a Brooklyn-based street artist. Drawing on both realistic and fantastical elements, Curry has been transforming the world with her immersive installations, wheat-paste portraits, and community-based social justice projects for the last two decades.
While Curry’s work has adorned the walls of more classical institutions—including New York’s Museum of Modern Art, the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston, and the Tate Modern—her overarching aim is always to create accessible art that transports audiences while simultaneously shedding light on pressing social and environmental issues. Most recently, she has begun exploring visual storytelling through film and animation.
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