Earlier this month, just weeks after opening its newest exhibition, Cowboy, which examines myths and stereotypes around the idea of the cowboy, the Amon Carter Museum of American Art (the Carter) in Fort Worth temporarily closed the show and canceled some related, planned programming due to “mature content.”
While the Carter has declined an opportunity to share the timeline of its decisions, on Sunday, October 6, its website said the exhibition was temporarily closed and did not provide additional details. Visitors to the exhibition encountered a sign indicating the show’s closure, and they also did not receive an explanation about why it was closed or when it would reopen. Last week, the Fort Worth Report noted that the exhibition has since reopened with a sign at its entrance that warns of “mature content” and provides a QR code for visitors to preview the exhibition.
When asked about the circumstances that led up to the closure, the decision to reopen with a mature content sign, the museum’s definition of “mature content,” and other pertinent details, a museum spokesperson did not directly respond to the questions posed by Glasstire. Instead, the museum provided the following statement:
“We received some feedback about the exhibition’s content and needed time to evaluate and get aligned on messaging for visitors. The Carter welcomes audiences who bring different perspectives and backgrounds, and we wanted to give visitors a chance to preview the works before entering the exhibition, so we added signage outside the exhibition entrance with a link to the exhibition checklist. The exhibition itself has not changed. We always try to consider the needs of our community, and these adjustments acknowledge their feedback.”
Because the museum has not provided information about which artworks were deemed “mature,” it is impossible to point to a specific work that brought about the closure. However, a walk through the exhibition leaves a few options, including photographs from Laurel Nakadate’s Lucky Tiger series, which depict a scantily clad, and in one image bare-breasted woman; drawings from Matthew J. Mahoney’s In the Wake of John Joel Glanton, which shows a character from the Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian in various stages of dying; and rafa esparza’s Sueños Norteños installation, which depicts two men fully-clothed in western gear dancing at a dancehall and kissing.
The mature content sign now prefacing the exhibition is unusual for the Carter, a museum that has works containing similar subject matters in its permanent collection. In a prominent downstairs location the Carter displays a fully nude sculpture of a woman, Diana by Augustus Saint–Gaudens, and in an upstairs gallery there is a small bronze of a similar figure by the artist. The museum also prominently displays works alluding to and featuring violence, like Frederic Remington’s A Dash for the Timber, which depicts cowboys on horseback shooting at a group of Indigenous people riding behind them. In another upstairs gallery, Thomas Eakins’ Swimming shows a scene of six fully nude men swimming together, though the viewer sees only their backsides. None of these works are accompanied by a mature content sign.
Beyond adding the content warning sign to the exhibition, the Carter has quietly canceled programming around the show, including educational events geared toward families and public tours. While the museum has not confirmed this, past iterations of the Carter’s website available via The Wayback Machine, an internet archive, show that at one point the programming included events for homeschool audiences, toddlers, and regular guided tours open to the public.
Some of these programs have been altered while others have been completely canceled. The original description of the homeschool workshop included the Cowboy exhibition and the event was listed on the exhibition’s webpage. However, now the workshop does not include the exhibition as part of the event and the program has been removed from the Cowboy page. The guided tours seem to have been completely removed.
Additionally, though the museum previously highlighted the Cowboy exhibition in the banner of its main page, as it typically does for all current exhibitions, as of this publishing the banner has changed to exclude a slide for the show. Similarly, it seems that the museum is pulling back from its citywide billboard advertisements for the exhibition. Billboards in Fort Worth that almost exclusively depict Carter advertisements throughout the run of the museum’s shows, and which once promoted the Cowboy exhibition, now have ads for other companies.
Glasstire also reached out to the Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA) Denver, the organizing museum for this traveling exhibition. A spokesperson declined to respond to questions regarding whether the Carter was in contact with the MCA Denver about its decision, but shared that it did not have a mature content sign as part of its installation of the exhibition.
It is noteworthy that since the 1990s, there has been a push in the U.S. Congress by the Republican Party to defund the arts, in part as a response to LGBTQ artists. While the Carter has not censored or changed the show in any way, it is hard to pin down what the museum deems to be mature content, since it has not provided the public with a definition. The only content in the Cowboy show that does not have an exact comparison currently on view in the museum’s permanent collection is rafa esparza’s installation that includes a depiction of romantic affection between two men.
Though other big Texas cities, (Dallas, Austin, San Antonio, Houston, and El Paso) tend to lean more liberal, Fort Worth, and Tarrant County as a whole, is more conservative. Museums in the city, such as the Kimbell Art Museum and the Sid Richardson Museum, both of which are privately funded organizations, often present exhibitions with a focus on a more traditional art canon. The outlier tends to be The Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, which has shown more controversial exhibitions, highlighting artists who are often underrepresented or historically excluded from the art world. The Carter, originally named the Amon Carter Museum of Western Art, was founded to present the collection of Fort Worth businessman Amon G. Carter, Sr., which predominantly focused on paintings and sculptures by Frederic Remington and Charles M. Russell.
Over the last decade the Carter has pushed beyond its long-time reputation as a museum of Western Art. Notable shows include Emancipation: The Unfinished Project of Liberation, Speaking with Light: Contemporary Indigenous Photography, Black Every Day: Photographs from the Carter Collection, In Our Own Words: Native Impressions, In Her Image: Photographs by Rania Matar, Border Cantos: Richard Misrach | Guillermo Galindo, and Discarded: Photographs by Anthony Hernandez. However, following this institutional change in tone, from summer 2023 to summer 2024 four curators left the Carter for other positions or retired: Maggie Adler, Kristen Gaylord, Spencer Wigmore, and John Rohrbach. These departures and the recent unprecedented decision to cancel programs and add a mature content sign to this exhibition well after it had already been approved by the board and opened to the public raise questions about possible tensions between the museum’s board and its curatorial vision.
1 comment
Thank you, Jessica, for filling in some of the details. Local newspapers were scant on information.