Emancipation: The Unfinished Project of Liberation
March 12–July 9, 2023
In conjunction with the 160th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation, the Carter presents newly commissioned and recent works by Sadie Barnette, Alfred Conteh, Maya Freelon, Hugh Hayden, Letitia Huckaby, Jeffrey Meris, and Sable Elyse Smith in a new exhibition visualizing Black freedom, agency, and the legacy of the Civil War. The seven installations featured in Emancipation: The Unfinished Project of Liberation—spanning sculpture, photography, and paper and textile fabrications—respond to the legacy of John Quincy Adams Ward’s bronze sculpture The Freedman (1863) from the Carter’s collection and highlight the diversity of materials and forms in sculpture, installation, and mixed media today. Co-organized by the Carter and the Williams College Museum of Art, the exhibition demonstrates how historical art collections can be a resource and inspiration for contemporary artistic practices.
Christina Fernandez: Multiple Exposures
March 12–July 9, 2023
This exhibition, organized by the California Museum of Photography at UCR ARTS, Riverside, CA, is the first extensive survey of work by the Los Angeles-based photographer Christina Fernandez. The artist has spent decades in a rich exploration of migration, labor, gender, her Mexican American identity, and the unique capacities of the photographic medium itself. Christina Fernandez: Multiple Exposures firmly centers Fernandez’s work within contemporaneous movements including postmodernism and the Chicano movement. In this comprehensive solo exhibition spanning 30 years of artwork, Fernandez’s images compel viewers to reconsider history, the border, and the lives of those who cross and inhabit them.
Avedon’s West
April 1–October 1, 2023
Spring 2023 marks the 100th anniversary of the birth of Richard Avedon, renowned fashion and portrait photographer. As part of a national celebration led by The Richard Avedon Foundation, the Carter is showcasing thirteen works of art from the acclaimed series In the American West, which the Museum commissioned in 1979 and premiered in 1985. Over the course of five years, Avedon traveled through thirteen states and 189 towns from Texas to Idaho, conducting 752 sittings and photographing a range of everyday people throughout the western U.S. in a now-iconic style he’d formerly applied to celebrities and politicians. The Carter owns one of only two complete sets of the series—one of the most important photographic projects of the 20th century. The selection of photographs from the series will be presented throughout the Museum’s collection galleries.
Elizabeth Turk
May 2023–May 2024
In continuation of the multiyear outdoor sculpture program launched in 2022 to activate the Museum’s grounds, Elizabeth Turk’s The Tipping Point: Echoes of Extinction will mark the third installation in this initiative. Turk’s series comprises vertical sound sculptures of bird species that are endangered or are extinct. Each artwork is a sculptural visualization of the call of a bird that has reached, or surpassed, a tipping point. Whether it is a story of loss (the Ivory-billed Woodpecker) or regeneration (Bald Eagle), each sculpture stands as a totemic memorial to a particular species, reminding us of our role in the precious and delicate—and quickly changing—environment. Accompanying each sculpture is a QR code containing the audio files of the bird’s song; many of the species inhabit, or were previously found, in Texas.
Arthur Dove: Miniature Laboratories
May 13–August 27, 2023
Drawn primarily from the Carter’s collection, Arthur Dove: Miniature Laboratories examines for a selection of work from the last years of Dove’s life (1940–46). These small works were created when Dove was confined in his home and the surrounding area in Long Island, NY, due to health issues. During this time, he created hundreds of works on paper, most measuring three-by-four-inches, experimenting with various mediums and techniques. An in-depth examination and analysis of these works by the Carter’s conservation team reveals new insight into Dove’s creative process.
Leonardo Drew
June 17, 2023–June 2024
Sculptor Leonardo Drew is the next contemporary artist to transform the Museum’s first-floor galleries with a new site-specific commission. Known for his large-scale, multi-dimensional installations, Drew employs organic materials to create topographies that are looming in size and stunning in their intricacies. For this project, Drew will anchor sculptural pieces that he refers to as “planets” and surround them with hundreds of smaller objects as he works to identify the interconnectedness of them all. This commission is the latest in a series initiated by the Carter in 2015 to respond to works in the Museum’s collection through the perspectives of American artists working today.
The World Outside: Louise Nevelson at Midcentury
August 27, 2023–January 7, 2024
The World Outside: Louise Nevelson at Midcentury is one of the first exhibitions examining Louise Nevelson’s midcentury sculptures and works on paper through the lens of the artistic and cultural landscape that shaped her vision. Bringing together defining examples of Nevelson’s wall works, installations, and prints from across the country—many side by side for the first time—The World Outside illuminates Nevelson’s multidimensional mastery of form and reaffirms the significance of her works as critical accounts of American history. The exhibition, through more than 50 key artworks, offers an in-depth study of the artistic, economic, and political forces behind Nevelson’s multifaceted innovations at midcentury. Working against repressive gender norms and a culture of mass consumption, Nevelson subverted the era’s obsession with domesticity and industrial production by championing hands-on techniques and repurposed materials.
Come to Colorado
August 27, 2023–January 7, 2024
Drawn exclusively from the Carter’s Fred and Jo Mazzulla Collection, this exhibition showcases 19th-century photographs including work from W. J. Carpenter, Joseph M. Collier, and William Henry Jackson. Fred Mazzulla spent decades building a collection of visual materials, including photographs, about the history of Colorado. Acquired by the Carter in 1976, these rarely shown photographs document Colorado’s settlement by White Americans, and the promotion of the area as an outdoor playground in tandem with the growth of the mining industry of the late 19th century.
Trespassers: James Prosek and the Texas Prairie
September 16, 2023–January 28, 2024
Less than 1 percent of native prairies exist across the state of Texas. This conservation concern is the catalyst for more than 20 new works created by artist and naturalist James Prosek. Over the past two years, Prosek has traveled to grassland habitats across the state, ranging from urban restoration projects to unplowed remnant prairies, documenting the rich plant and wildlife diversity of these spaces. Trespassers: James Prosek and the Texas Prairie features a new large-scale silhouette painting, one of Prosek’s signature working styles; watercolor portraits of plants collected during his travels; and trompe l’oeil clay and bronze sculptures of wildflowers. Through these works, Prosek investigates the allure of Texas’s grasslands while raising broader questions about the boundaries that shape, limit, and define prairie spaces in the present day.
