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E X H I B I T I O N S
UPCOMING EXHIBITIONS
Barton Myers: Norfolk Visionary
September 30 at the Moses Myers House
Mayor Barton Myers transformed his city from a prosperous
coastal town into a thriving modern metropolis. Thanks to a
generous gift from T. Parker Host, the Moses Myers House
honors this “first citizen of Norfolk” with a display of objects
and images highlighting his extraordinary life.
To Live Forever: Egyptian Treasures
from the Brooklyn Museum
October 14, 2009 –
January 3, 2010
in the Large
Changing Gallery
For more information on this
blockbuster exhibition,
please see this issue’s cover
story on pages 2-3.
Upper Part of a False Door of Sethew, Old Kingdom, ca. 2500-2350 B.C.E.
Limestone, painted 22 1 /16 x 20 1 /2 x 4 15 /16 in. (56 x 52 x 12.5 cm)
place found: Giza, Egypt, Africa Charles Edwin Wilbour Fund
Photographs
by Eliot Porter
October 24, 2009 –
February 28, 2010
in the Kaufman
Theatre Lobby
Continuing our downstairs
series highlighting great
photography from the
Museum’s permanent
collection, this exhibition
focuses on the striking color
landscapes and nature images
of Eliot Porter (1901–1990).
Artist, chemist, physician, and
naturalist Porter was among
the first to adopt the newly
developed dye transfer process.
Beginning in 1939 Porter
literally created a new way of presenting
nature. His large-format prints combine
precise observation with rich and
resonant color.
Eliot Porter (American, 1901–1990)
Aspens by Lake from Trees portfolio,
1988, Gift of Joseph C. French, Jr. and
John Wawrzonek
©Amon Carter Museum Archive
Action Paintings at the Chrysler
October 17, 2009 – April 11, 2010
in the Waitzer Community Gallery
In the pivotal years around World War II, a group of American
avant-garde artists centered in New York began to create a new
form of painting that challenged both aesthetic tradition and
public expectation. Their canvases no longer depicted
recognizable subjects, but instead focused on the act of painting
itself. Influenced by Freudian psychology and emerging notions
of the subconscious, firebrands like Jackson Pollock and Franz
Kline channeled their spontaneity and creative dictates into a
vital form of abstraction. The canvas became “an arena in which
to act,” their work, “action painting.” With pigment dripped,
flung, stroked, and slashed across their canvases, these young
rebels forged a radically new vocabulary of artistic gesture that
helped birth Abstract Expressionism and dominated progressive
American painting well into the 1960s.
As an enthusiastic collector of Action Painting, Walter P. Chrysler, Jr. befriended many of the movement’s founders and
purchased major examples of their work. Though many of these acquisitions (including canvases by Hans Hoffmann,
Pollock, and Kline) are today on display in our McKinnon Galleries of Modern Art, many more have remained in our
storage vaults—until this exhibition that encourages viewers to revel in the pure optical pleasure of paint applied to
canvas and to survey a wide range of responses, from intensely emotional to the lyrical and serene.
Michael Goldberg
(American,
1955-1956)
Red Sunday
Morning, 1955–56
Gift of Walter P.
Chrysler, Jr.
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