One hundred of the most evocative pho¬tographs from one of the country's premier collections will go on view July 1 at the
Amon Carter Museum. That the Carter Museum itself is the source of this collection, lends the display a particular
sense of hometown pride - any other museum would find it necessary to consult the Carter.
"This show presents some of the most artful, dramatic and inspiring photographs in the history of the medium," as the Carter's John Rohrbach tells it. "It was dif¬ficult to narrow the selection to 100, but we wanted to take advantage of the opportuni¬ty to showcase highlights of the collection in the museum's prime gallery space."
The exhibition begins with one of the first daguerreotypes made in America - a portrait from 1840 or thereabouts of two Philadelphia doctors - and continues across the medium's full history, presenting the technical development of photography from the daguerreotype to digital works made just last year.
Alison Nordstrom, curator of photo-graphs at Rochester, N.Y.'s George Eastman House, has described the Carter's collection as "a jewel of connoisseurship and a national treasure."
Photography has been integral to the Carter archival mission and programming activities for almost all of its 45-year histo¬ry. Soon after the museum had opened in January 1961 to display Amon G. Carter's collection of works by Frederic Remington and Charles M. Russell, founding director Mitchell A. Wilder (1913-79) began to include photography in his expansive and imaginative plans for the museum.
The documentary photographer Dorothea Lange (1895-1965) provided the first such opportunity when she suggested, in May 1961, that her photographs of Charles Russell (a friend of her husband, the Western painter Maynard Dixon) would complement the museum's holdings of Russell's an. Wilder wasted no time in acquiring a selection of Lange's studies, and the cornerstone of the photography col¬lection was formed.
During the ensuing years, the Carter's photography collection developed the dual character of being, on the one hand. an extensive historical archive documenting American cultural history and, on the other, a fine-art collection representing some of the greatest American achievements in photographic art. The new exhibition of 100 Great American Photographs will acquaint visitors with a representative sam¬pling.
"Who would have imagined that an art museum that began with the drawings, paintings and sculpture of Frederic Remington and Charles Russell at its core would go on to form one of the most renowned collections of photographs in America?" asks Weston Naef, curator of photographs at Los Angeles' J. Paul Getty Museum. "`All embracing' is the best way to describe the Amon Carter Museum's photography holdings. The collection was formed with a likeable combination of dis¬cernment and craving."
The museum's continued commitment to its photography collection is mirrored in its frequent presentation of special exhibi¬tions - both traveling shows and those organized by the Carter. Recent examples include In the American West Photographs by Richard Avedon; Master Prints of Edward S. Curtis: Portraits of Native America; Brent Phelps: Photographing the Lewis & Clark Trail; Eliot Porter: The Color of Wildness; and Edward Weston: Life Work. This coming fall, the museum will present two additional such exhibitions: Bound for Glory (Sept. 2-Nov. 12), organ¬ized by the Library of Congress; and Regarding the Land: Robert Glenn Ketchum and the Legacy of Eliot Porter, Sept. 16-Jan. 7, organized by the Carter Museum.
An assortment of public programs will accompany 100 Great American Photographs. These include a participatory exercise in do-it-yourself picture-taking (1 p.m. July 9), and a lecture by the documen¬tary photographer Peter Feresten, of Tarrant County College (3 p.m. July 23).