rafa esparza’s al Tempo Guerrero, Querías Norte8.
JAMES RUSSELL | Contributing Writer
james.journo@gmail.com
When the board of the Amon Carter Museum of American Art’s voted in 2010 to rename it from a museum of Western art to one of American art, the goal was to better reflect its mission.
The museum opened in 1961 as a single building designed by gay architect Philip Johnson, housing the Western sketches, ephemera, paintings and sculpture by Frederic Remington and Charles Russell (no relation) and owned by Fort Worth booster Amon Carter. It then became multiple buildings, also designed by Johnson, holding a heralded photography collection, sculptures, paintings and prints reflecting the American experience.
It reopened in 2019 following renovations that reoriented galleries and created new spaces to accommodate ambitious exhibits, and a new era for the museum began. With new curators working alongside seasoned ones, new concept galleries and larger gallery spaces gave more room for art, and to showcase diversity of American art.
That made Cowboy, which opened last September and runs through March 23, an ideal show.
Organized by the Museum of Contemporary Art Denver, the show retells a new story of the West with 60 paintings, photographs, sculptures, videos and ephemera by more than 25 artists, including people of color as well as LGBTQ artists. Each piece, according to a press release, re-examines “the significance of cowboy imagery in American culture” and reconsider “a homogenous ideal of the cowboy as a white, cisgender American male.”
It opened on Sept. 28 but by Oct. 11 had closed for two weeks before re-opening with a new sign at the entrance warning of mature content and including photos of work in the exhibit.
It’s not clear what art works offended patrons. But Cliff Vanderpool, director of development and communications, wrote in an e-mail, “We 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 the signage you saw outside the exhibition entrance with a link to the exhibition checklist.”
At an artist talk earlier this month, two of the artists in the show addressed the controversy.
rafa esparza, a Los Angeles-based queer artist, worked with Fabian Guerrero on an installation featuring a painting titled al Tempo. It depicts two Latino cowboys kissing set back from Guerrero’s Querías Norte, which recreates an adobe dance hall with dusty floors with videos of more cowboys dancing.
“I see this as a form of censorship,” esparza said according to KERA.
“Our project, you’re just seeing two men dancing together, and there’s no harm to that,” Guerrero added.
Other works with LGBTQ content, according to ARTnews include Ana Segovia’s work queering the charro archetype, photographer Deana Lawson’s work presenting images of Black cowboys, and Mel Chin’s work showing a saddle formed of barbed wire as a statement on “the Catholic colonization of Texas,” according to a description on his website.
In December, photographs in the show Diaries of Home at Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth were removed following manufactured conservative outcries about Sally Mann’s photographs of her children naked. It prompted a criminal complaint and removal of those photographs, and it prompted some to tie allegations of child pornography to the LGBTQ community.What fell by the wayside with that show, which closed earlier this month, and Cowboy was any discussion about the exhibits and artists.
Exhibits, especially those like Cowboy and Diaries of Home elevate artists’ profiles and lead them to find their ways into public and private collections. But especially important here, despite the controversy, is that Cowboy continues that same dialogue between Remington, Russell and esparza by providing new insight into art and doing justice to all those involved in American history.
Cowboy continues through March 23 and is located on the second floor of the Amon Carter Museum of American Art, 3501 Camp Bowie Blvd. The museum is closed on Mondays and is open from 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Tuesday, Wednesday, Fridays and Saturdays, from 10 a.m.- 8 p.m. Thursdays and from noon-5 p.m. on Sundays. Admission is free.