The Amon Carter Art Museum of American Art will celebrate the closing of its current special exhibit with a free “Party on the Porch” Saturday evening.
The exhibit, Sargent, Whistler and Venetian Glass: American Artists and the Magic of Murano has been on display since June 11 and closes on Sunday.
The event will feature a variety of hands-on art activities, extended gallery hours and a live performance by Grammy-nominated country music artist Brent Cobb.
This will also be a final chance to view a separate exhibit, Black Every Day: Photographs from the Carter Collection, celebrating 100 years of Black American life, which also closes on Sunday.
Local food trucks will be on-site, offering a variety of food and beverage options for purchase. Pan Ector Industries of Denton will offer Fort Worth-themed T-shirts screen-printed on-site.
A VIP area for museum members will provide free drinks and light food.
Drawing inspiration from the exhibit, art activities will include a build-your-own Venice-themed cityscape with blocks and creating a mixed-media mosaic or a wearable piece of art.
“The Carter is thrilled to host our annual free, fun art and music festival, Party on the Porch, as well as celebrate the exhibition,” museum Executive Director Andrew J. Walker said in a statement. “Our evening of Venice, art-making activities and live music will be a night you won’t want to miss.”
Organized by the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the exhibit showcases the Venetian glass revival of the late 19th Century, primarily from 1860 to 1915, and the creative work by visiting artists that it inspired.
The beauty of decorative, hand-blown glass produced in the Venetian island of Murano, made Venice a popular destination for American tourists, eager to collect these stunning works of art.American artists, such as John Singer Sargent and James McNeill Whistler, took note of collector interest and created depictions of Italian glassmakers and glass objects, in their artwork. The exhibit features more than 140 pieces of artwork, including rare etchings by Whistler, oil paintings by Sargent and pieces by other notable artists, including, Thomas Moran, Maxfield Parrish, Maurice Prendergast, Ellen, Day Hale and William Day Hale.
The works come from the Smithsonian’s collection as well as other major museums, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City and the Art Institute of Chicago, as well as private collections.
Paintings and prints are intermingled with cups, vases, urns and other examples of Murano glassworks.
“This exhibition will take us back in time to understand the impact of Italian glass on American art, literature and design, as well as ideas at the time about gender, labor and class relations,” Maggie Adler, curator of paintings, sculpture and works on paper as well as curator of the exhibit for the Carter, said in a statement. “The role of women and unrecognized Venetian artisans takes center state alongside of the United States’ most prominent painters.”
Throughout the Carter’s presentation of the exhibit, the museum developed a unique glassmaking project with Texas artist Justin Ginsberg, who set up a glass kiln on the museum grounds on weekends to create glass threads for a “waterfall” sculpture as visitors observed.
“The creative potential of glass is certainly not something that belongs solely in the past,” Adler said. “Justin Ginsberg’s work brings the art of working with glass into this century. He manipulates the tricky material until it is as thin as hair.” The installation “will refract the light, shimmer with the movement of air and give everyone a stunning effect of having come upon a building rainstorm,” he said.
The museum parking lot will be closed Saturday and Sunday due to the Party on the Porch party.
Free tickets to the event are required for everyone, including infants and toddlers and may be obtained online at www.cartermuseum.org/POP22. The event runs from 6 to 10 p.m.
Free parking is available in the surface lots of the University of North Texas Health Science Center north of the museum. Additional paid parking will be available at the Western Heritage garage and in the Will Rogers Memorial Center lots.
Pets, coolers, picnic baskets, glass items and outside alcohol are not allowed.
For more information, call 817-738-1933 or email info@cartermuseum.org.