Image: (top left to right) Christopher Blay; Lauren Cross; (bottom left to right) Diane Durant; Arnoldo Hurtado
The DFW area museums have great reputation for supporting Texas artists, especially Fort Worth’s Amon Carter Museum of American Art. In the past few years, the Amon Carter has featured Gabriel Dawe: Plexus no. 34, Commanding Space: Women Sculptors of Texas, and Darryl Lauster: Trace.
Yesterday, the Amon Carter announced Carter Community Artists, a new program dedicated to working with and supporting local artists with the goal to create opportunities for the North Texas community to connect with the museum’s renowned collection and artists in the region. Each year, the Amon Carter will select four local artists to assist with planning and leading programs on-site, off-site, and digitally. Now through September 2019, the museum will be working with artists Christopher Blay (a Glasstire contributor), Lauren Cross, Diane Durant, and Arnoldo Hurtado as part of the inaugural year for this new initiative.
According to its press release, participating artists will make a year-long commitment to be involved in a variety of projects and programs for children and adult audiences, with the flexibility to adapt to each artists’ particular areas of practice and expertise. The Carter Community Artists’ work with students is especially important as it has the potential to create a pathway for students to discover the many facets of and careers in the art world. Each artist will have the opportunity to be involved in developing and leading afterschool, homeschool, and summer programs; teacher workshops; and recording sessions for the museum’s distance learning program, which reaches students of all ages around the globe. As the museum continues to expand experiences for adult visitors, the artists will have the chance to share their thoughts, ideas, and talents with staff to help develop original and fresh program formats and content.
The Carter Community Artists program also strives to build relationships between artists working in Fort Worth and the surrounding areas who may know of each other, but have not previously worked together. Over the course of the program’s commitment—each October through the following September—the artists will come together for six scheduled meetings to discuss and develop concepts and programs. Applications will be available each May with selections announced in August of each year.
For more information on the four artists involved, check out their websites or the article at ARTFIXdaily.
