The Fort Worth Circle

The Amon Carter Museum, in Fort Worth, is showing "Intimate Modernism: Fort Worth Circle Artists in the 1940s". Dave Hickey is giving a related lecture on March 29. Eleven artists are included in the show. As near as I can tell they are Bror Utter, Bill Bomar, Dixon Reeder, Lia Cuilty, Flora Reeder, Cynthia Brants, Veronica Helfensteller, Marjorie Johnson, Sara Shannon, Kelly Fearing, and George Grammer. A few artists working in Fort Worth around the time that may have associated with the circle but are not included are Blanche McVeigh, Olive Pemberton, Emily Guthrie Smith, George Grammer, David Brownlow, Marjorie Johnson, Evaline Sellors, Charles T. Williams, Marjorie Johnson Lee, Ann Boynton, Jack Boynton, McKie Trotter, and John Erickson. I assume various artists were excluded from the show because they came later than 1950 or they were not at that time a part of the group that was a relatively organized, cohesive bunch in the 1940s. My parents met some of these artists in the 1950s, but the cocktail party had changed by then. I know that Fearing had moved on, eventually to the University of Texas, where he taught when I was a student there. My parents were acquainted with Utter, Bomar, the Reeders, as well as artists who must have come later, like McKie Trotter, Jack Boynton, and Charlie Williams. As a boy, I saw some of these artists' work at the Amon Carter Museum and Ted Weiner's sculpture garden.