Read this doc on Scribd: Fort Worth Business Press - Culture Spring 2008
Fort Worth ulture SPRING 08 The Bass Hall decade ... Fort Worth's Jazz Heritage ... Gracey Tune & Arts Fifth Avenue ... Four great museums anniversary Bass Performance Hall A 10th anniversary By Michael H. Price Bass Performance Hall has decisively stretched the boundaries of Fort Worth's Cultural District to embrace the downtown area. N early 10 years have passed since the opening of Nancy Lee and Perry R. Bass Performance Hall as the last great concert venue of the 20th century. The timing might as well have suggested the rise of a new century's first great concert hall, for the Bass - with its forward-thinking acoustical versatility and its willingness to engage in the promotion of artistry for the sake of art - anticipated a New Millennium more so than it looked backward to its kindred ancestral showplaces of the Old World or early-day America. A 10th Anniversary Festival is a foregone conclusion. The dates are April 29-May 4, reflecting the watershed opening of 1998. The events will include these: . An April 29 showcase for gifted schoolchildren, including performances from the the Paschal High School Jazz Band and the All-City Honor Choir. . An admission-free performance April 30 from roots-music ace Jack Ingram. . A jazz blowout May 1, featuring Chuck Mangione and Dianne Reeves. . A formal anniversary-date concert May 3, featuring Liza Minnelli. . And a May 4 gospel extravaganza featuring Fort Worth native Kirk Franklin. (Web: www.basshall.com) Along with the close-by Sid Richardson Museum, Bass Performance Hall has decisively stretched the boundaries of Fort Worth's Cultural District to embrace the downtown area. The Bass' masterstroke - apart from its savvy home-base affiliations with the Fort Worth Symphony, Texas Ballet Theatre, the Fort Worth Opera and the Cliburn Competition - is that of operating a Children's Education Program as a perpetual-motion function of the operating agency, Performing Arts Fort Worth. The educational outreach assures that schoolchildren from throughout the area are granted access to musical finery as a matter of routine. The very acoustics of the hall have helped to hone the Fort Worth Symphony, in particular, to a sonic near-perfection that suggests candidacy for popular regard among the Top Five American orchestras. The FW Symphony's success with a recent début at New York's Carnegie Hall owes much to the stimu- PHOTO BY JON P. UZZEL lus of the orchestra's extended workout in a fine local hall. A more-than-figurative kinship between the Bass and the Carnegie derives in part from Bass-family ties to both institutions. There are more nuanced connections, as well: In 2001, when the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition settled into Bass Hall as a base of operations, I booked a classicalpiano film festival into the nearby Palace Theatre as a show of solidarity - concentrating upon favorite motion pictures selected by Van Cliburn himself. One of the movies was Edgar G. Ulmer's Carnegie Hall (1947), whose array of personalities includes the celebrated conductor Artur Rodzinsky (18921958), father of the Cliburn Foundation's Richard Rodzinsky. Small world. As developer Edward P. Bass has explained: Bass Hall "was built entirely with privately contributed funds, and it operates as a civic-oriented nonprofit for the benefit of our community." Financial challenges may surface from time to time, given the mer- curial nature of show business, but the dedication to permanence persists. "We're building our audiences for tomorrow," as Paul Beard, managing director, has noted."We present many shows, and we're at risk . [What] sustains the hall is our consistent success in presenting shows to our economic benefit. The purpose of that benefit is to cover the expense we incur in accommodating the resident companies." Not to mention that the 2,056-seat hall, as designed by David M. Schwarz' Architectural Services Inc., has settled into the skyline as an iconic evocation of the classic European opera-house style, with an inviting human-scale accessibility. Every show-business venture needs its "angels," too - but the angels adorning the Bass are literal as well as figurative: Marton Varo's two 48-foot Grand Façade sculptures serve a heralding presence that has drawn any number of visitors to the Commerce Street landmark - and suggest a guardianship over Bass Hall to match the Bass' proven guardianship of the fine and popular arts. FWC Contact Price at mprice@bizpress.net 4 Fort Worth Culture / Spring 08 Spring 08 / Fort Worth Culture 5 music Adonis Rose & the Fort Worth Jazz Orchestra A storm-driven merger of traditions By Michael H. Price Since early on in the last century, Fort Worth has nurtured a jazz-andblues heritage comparable with that of any other such burg short of New Orleans. he coastal panic of 2005 sent many residents of New Orleans ranging far afield in advance of the onslaught of Hurricane Katrina. Fort Worth, prominent among the earliest Southwestern cities to lend refuge, became as a result a new home base for the acclaimed percussionist Adonis Rose. Rose - who has worked with such marquee names as Harry Connick Jr. and Wynton Marsalis - returned the courtesy by founding the Fort Worth Jazz Orchestra, a 16piece ensemble dedicated to a combination of preservation and newly commissioned artistry. From beginnings in association with Bass Performance Hall's McDavid Studio satellite, the Fort Worth Jazz Orchestra has performed and recorded extensively while Rose has persisted as a solo artist. His more recent projects include the development of an ensemble known as the N.O. Vaders, in addition to contributions to the musical score of Spike Lee's recent documentary film about the Katrina disaster, When the Levees Broke. Rose, born in 1975 in New Orleans, is hip to it that his town has always generated more jazz than it knows what to do with. The haunted Crescent City learned early on to consume all it can and then export the rest - a jazz-independent society that has rendered the rest of the world thoroughly dependent upon jazz. And all the better for it. The old-timers will swear that jazz, blaring forth from the brass and the reeds and the Talking Drums of African origin, is the sonic levee that held a phantom menace at bay during New Orleans' Great Axe-Man Scare of 1918-1919. Amid a siege of wholesale murder, The Times-Picayune fielded a letter-to-the-editor from some fool professing to be the rampaging Axe-Man - and vowing to spare the jazz enthusiasts. Call it Blues Passover. Did Buddy Bolden, that mighty founding bugler of 19th-century jazz, propel New Orleans into the culture-at-large? Maybe not in a direct sense, although those same oldtime legend-bearers who tell of the Axe-Man will aver that Bolden's horn could be heard for miles away from wherever he happened to be blasting. Certainly, Bolden's influence fueled the passions of those Orleanians who would range more freely through space and time - King Oliver, Jelly Roll Morton, Louis Armstrong, Sidney Bechét - seeding the music into Kansas City and Chicago and Manhattan and St. Louis and Fort Worth. Since early on in the last century, Fort Worth has nurtured a jazz-and-blues heritage comparable with that of any other such burg short of N.O. And how else to explain Euday Bowman and Red Connor and Ornette Coleman and Tex Beneke and the archetypal jazz-in-a-Stetson of Bob Wills? The localized influences have proved too varied, however, to permit one identity as iconic as that which Louis Armstrong has provided to New Orleans. A singer from Fort Worth named Milton Brown, who had insinuated W.C. Handy's "St. Louis Blues" into Wills' hoedown fiddle-band repertoire in 1929, interlaced Fred Calhoun's jazz piano with prototypical Western Swing early in the T 1930s with one crucial song: New Orleans' emblematic "Tiger Rag." You get the picture. New Orleans, of course, has disseminated its indigenous music to telling effect since the day of Jelly Roll Morton, though with seldom a pressing need to disperse its populace in the bargain. The onslaught of Hurricane Katrina sent innumerable Louisianans inland to Texas. Adonis Rose, one in a jillion, came aground in Fort Worth with his music as essential gear. And as a New Orleanian traditionalist-plusinnovator (or N.O. Vader, to crib from his playful terminology), Rose recognized Fort Worth straightaway as fertile ground for a transplant. New Orleans' loss - Fort Worth's gain, acknowledged with gratitude. Rose's establishment of the Fort Worth Jazz Orchestra merges the heritage of both cities in a striking manner. Rose's N.O. Vaders ensemble advances the Crescent identity, reaching back and looking forward with nary a lapsed beat. "I miss New Orleans.," says Rose."But now I feel it's a perfect time for me to . bring my experiences here, along with the music of New Orleans." A historic precedent bears remembering: Malcolm "Dr. John" Rebennack developed his greater identity as a musical ambassador from New Orleans only after he had sidetracked himself to New York and L.A. in indignant response to a 20th-century catastrophe - Jim Garrison's politically motivated campaign to sanitize N.O.'s rambunctious French Quarter. Likewise, in a sense, with Adonis Rose. Best of both worlds. FWC Contact Price at mprice@bizpress.net Adonis Rose 12 Fort Worth Culture / Spring 08 museums Fort Worth Circle at Carter Museum Mo'dern' modern art from Texas By Michael H. Price he Fort Worth Circle - a fabled and enduringly relevant Cynthia Brants (1924-2006), who remained a working artist despite her colony of artists who helped to re-define art as a class during retrospective regard of the Circle as a relic. the 1940s and '50s - comes full-circle in a massive exhibition "It was natural and inevitable that our work was relegated to history on view at the Amon Carter Museum. The styles of painting and no longer considered relevant to Fort Worth's ambitions for continuand etching are too wildly diversified to allow any simple description: One ing cultural prominence in the visual arts," Brants said in connection with might say the members shared a determination to describe how it felt to that 2005 showing."It was, however, sufficient for us to have opened some be alive at a time of unbridled creative enthusiasm and reciprocal encoureyes to a wider range of possibilities in painting and sculpture than had agement. been previously accepted." The most lasting direct tangents have surfaced The display of nearly 100 striking examples is called Intimate in the performing arts, via such deeply rooted Fort Worth troupes as Hip Modernism: Fort Worth Circle Artists in the 1940s, the first such industrialPocket Theatre and SceneShop. strength retrospective in more than 20 years. If some of the works suggest The history of the Fort Worth Circle will find amplification and intermusic to those discovering the Circle for the first time, it might be helpful pretation in a variety of lectures and participatory activities. A recent talk to mention that Stravinsky and Ravel were among the members' preferred by Fort Worth-based historian Quentin McGown has covered 16 works composers; at the time of the Circle's launching, the modern-jazz moveby Bror Utter (1913-1993), as commissioned by the pioneering Fort ment had not quite taken a decisive form. Worth preservationist Sam Cantey III during the 1950s to chronicle the More than 50 years is more like it, in the case of many of the featured city's rapidly disappearing early-day architecture. (These watercolors are works. Some privately held pieces have gone that long without a publican exhibition in themselves.) viewing showcase, as organizing curaThen at 11 a.m. March 29, the celetor Jane Myers points out. brated art critic and author Dave The styles are as varied as the perHickey, formerly of Fort Worth, will sonalities who made up the Fort deliver a talk called "Fort Worth: How Worth Circle, but together the selecCowtown Became a Center for Art in tions tell nothing less than "the tale of the West," placing the local movement how progressive art came to Texas," in a broader context. Hickey, now adds Myers. Schaeffer professor of modern letters "The history of art in Fort Worth at the University of Nevada, Las goes back more than 100 years," as the Vegas, is a widely published authority historian-exhibitor Glenna Crocker whose contextual knowledge of prowrote to herald a 2005 Monticello gressive art is unsurpassed. Gallery show that placed the Fort The Fort Worth Circle radiated Worth Circle in context with Texas' from a nucleus of four locals, then in earlier artistic movements."The social their mid-20s, who met as students at and political posturing of those eras the Fort Worth School of Fine Arts: [since the 1940s] forever changed the Lia Cuilty, Veronica Helfensteller, creativity of the art world . [The Marjorie Johnson and Bror Utter. Just influence of the Circle] continues prior to America's involvement in today, although somewhat obscured by World War II, Dickson Reeder, a the influx of a multitude of modern school-days friend of Utter's, assumed contemporaries." Adventurous artists, leadership. Reeder and his New Yorkthat is, without direct ties to the speborn wife, Flora Blanc, provided the cific hometown background. social glue that bonded the group The advancement of the Circle's together. Also in the sphere were Sara influence into a new century had restShannon and William P."Bill" Bomar Marjorie Johnson Lee, Studio Corner ed largely with the abstract painter Jr. (The influential Reeder School of T Dickson Reeder, Portrait of Bill Bomar Lia Cuilty, Arrested Flight Theater & Design for Children will be the subject of a staged presentation on April 5-6 and April 11-12 by Hip Pocket Theatre, at the neighboring Community Arts Center.) Reeder, Bomar and Helfensteller shared in common a background in private art instruction. Kelly Fearing entered the circle as a newcomer to Fort Worth during the war. In 1945, Cynthia Brants (recently the subject of a memorial retrospective at Albany, Texas' Old Jail Art Center) became the youngest female member. George Grammer, youngest among the artists, joined in 1946. Drawn together by a shared interest in art, dance, music, theater and myth-making, the artists of the Fort Worth Circle sought new avenues of artistic expression as a departure from a prevailing preference for regionalism and other, more conservative, artistic styles. They also shared a fascination with fantastic, often enigmatic imagery that often infiltrates otherwise lifelike portraiture and deceptively conventional regional landscapes. Members of the Circle responded to modernism in art by creating a unique aesthetic based upon contemporary surrealism and abstraction - drawing largely upon the power of imagination. Their determined ascent to prominence proved lasting, as well. By the mid-1950s, the group's aesthetic gave way to newer ideas, but the shared view of art as a vista without boundaries persisted. The members became, in turn, significant as teachers while remaining produc- tive artists. Individual works can be found today in various museums and private collections; the Carter Museum's exhibition presents a unique opportunity to view the works together. Intimate Modernism: Fort Worth Circle Artists in the 1940s is accompanied by a catalogue of the same title. With more than 140 full-color reproductions, the publication can only stand as the definitive account of the movement. The annotated reproductions are accompanied by biographical notes and photographs. Other Fort Worth Circle activities will include Hip Pocket Theatre's Dickson School tribute, Tempest in a Dream, will perform at 7 p.m. April 5, 2 p.m. April 6, and 7 p.m. April 11-12 at the Community Art Center. And on April 12-13, the Center for the Advancement & Study of Early Texas Art (CASETA) will stage a symposium at the neighboring University of North Texas Health Science Center - prefacing the event with an April 11 reception at the Carter Museum. A detailed agenda can be found on the Web at www.caseta.org. FWC Contact Price at mprice@bizpress.net 14 Fort Worth Culture / Spring 08 Spring 08 / Fort Worth Culture 15 museums Kimbell Art Museum An impressive Impressionist impression By Michael H. Price he Art define the Institute of Impressionist Chicago achievement - widely will pay an reproduced paintings extended visit during the that will be familiar summer to Fort Worth. even to those who The occasion - have never visited the announced for June 29Art Institute. These Nov. 2 - is a loan of include the likes of some 90 paintings from Paris Street; Rainy Day the Art Institute's (1877), by Gustave renowned Impressionist Caillebotte; seven collection to Fort Cézannes, including Worth's Kimbell Art Madame Cézanne in a Museum. Yellow Chair Small world, indeed: (1893-95) and The The exhibition stems Bathers (1899-1904); from an ambitious resix Degases, including installation and expanYellow Dancers (In the sion project at the Art Wings) (1874-76) Institute, involving reno- Claude Monet, Stacks of Wheat (Sunset, Snow Effect), 1890-91. and The Millinery vation of the galleries Shop (1884-90); and the construction of seven Gauguins, including The Arlésiennes (1888) and The Ancestors of a new Modern Wing designed by Renzo Piano. Piano, in turn, is the Tehamana (1893); five Van Goghs, including Self-Portrait (1887) and The architect recently chosen by the Kimbell to design a neighboring building Bedroom (1889); seven Manets, including The Races at Longchamp (1866) within the Cultural District. The Art Institute's Impressionist collection and Woman Reading (1878-79); 26 Monets, including six paintings depicthas never left Chicago heretofore in such a large group. The selection will ing wheat stacks, four depicting London and three portraying water lilies; be shown exclusively at the Kimbell. 12 Renoirs, including Lunch at the Restaurant Fournaise (1875), Acrobats at The Impressionists: Master Paintings from the Art Institute of Chicago can only the Cirque Fernando (1879), and Two Sisters (On the Terrace) (1881); and surpass a terrific Barnes Collection exhibition, as seen 14 years ago at the three Toulouse-Lautrecs, including Moulin de la Galette (1889). Kimbell. The new show will feature masterpieces from the likes of The Art Institute of Chicago will open its Modern Wing in 2009. The Edouard Manet, Edgar Degas, Claude Monet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, movement of the modern and contemporary collections into the new Paul Cézanne, Paul Gauguin, Vincent Van Gogh and Henri de Toulouse- building offers the opportunity to reinstall earlier collections - including Lautrec. This succession of geniuses, as if by cosmic coincidence, worked the Impressionists - in renovated galleries. largely in the same country and within the approximate span of a shared During the Chicago overhaul, certain collections must be moved or lifetime. stored. The temporary relocation of the Impressionist collection created a Such painters of then-modern life created a new method of regarding unique opportunity for the Art Institute's greatest works to be shown one's surroundings, at once dreamlike and recognizably genuine. Carried more widely, and the Kimbell's Malcolm Warner, as acting director, seized forward by the so-called Post-Impressionists - represented in the exhibithe moment. tion by evolved works from Cézanne, Van Gogh, and Gauguin - the Founded in 1879 as a strategic combination of museum and an art Impressionist movement advanced many audaciously progressive pictorial school, the Art Institute of Chicago is one of the artistic treasure houses arguments that pointed toward the increasing modernization of fine art, of the world. Its encyclopedic collection of some 250,000 works qualifies it intersecting ever more with commercial art and design, during the 20th as the third-largest museum in the United States. FWC century. The exhibition will bring to Fort Worth works that have come to Contact Price at mprice@bizpress.net T Paul Cézanne, The Basket of Apples, c. 1893. Vincent van Gogh, The Bedroom, 1889. Pierre Auguste Renoir, Acrobats at the Cirque Fernando (Francisca and Angelina Wartenburg), 1879. Spring 08 / Fort Worth Culture 16 Fort Worth Culture / Spring 08 17 museums Modern Art Museum Sculptural exhibition distinguishes MAM By Michael H. Price f any one element of Fort Worth's cultural landscape san be said to state a case for a Bold New Millennium, it is the 2002 landmark address of the Modern Art Museum, designed by architect Tadao Ando as a sculptural statement in itself. The Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth is at once the oldest such museum in Texas - chartered in 1892 - and handily the newest in aspect. As befits a monumental sculpture of architectural pedigree, the Modern in its new location at 3200 Darnell Street, has fared particularly well as a showcase for internal exhibitions of sculpture. The exhibit of the moment is Martin Puryear, on view through May 18. The retrospective survey of works by a celebrated American artist features nearly 50 sculptures in an arc reaching from Martin Puryear's first solo museum show in 1977 to the present day. Working primarily in wood, Puryear (born 1941) has maintained a commitment to manual skill and traditional building methods. His forms derive from everyday objects, both natural and man-made, including tools, vessels and furniture. His sculptures are rich with psychological and intellectual references, examining issues of identity, culture, and history. Cultural influences can be traced to his studies, his work and his travels in Africa, Asia, Europe and the United States. The Modern's chief curator, Michael Auping, explains:"Bringing the eye and hand of the woodworker to Minimalism's precise forms has been one of [Puryear's] most pointed contributions . Puryear's work has a way of sneaking up on us perceptually, and it is partially through his surfaces that we are drawn in, invited to inspect his wooden objects more closely, as one would a more intimate construction, through the subtlety of inflection that he at times imparts to the surface." Puryear's Ladder for Booker T. Washington (1996), is part of the permanent collection of the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth - and as such, an ideal element of familiar leverage into the greater body of the exhibition. The towering object was inspired by homemade ladders that Puryear had noticed in the French countryside while working at Alexander Calder's studio on an invitational grant. In a conversation five years ago with Auping, Puryear said:"It just occurred to me that this would be an interesting project to try to do, to make a very tall or long ladder . I had been interested in working with a kind of artificial perspective through sculpture, which if you think about it is not so easy to do. With a ladder, a I very long ladder, I could make a form that would appear to recede into space faster visually than it in fact does physically." And like the functional ladders that inspired it, Ladder for Booker T. Washington is made from a single sapling that the artist had split down the middle. He added rungs to form a 36-foot ladder that narrows to just over an inch wide at the top. This sculpture, reinstalled in the double-height concrete gallery for the present exhibition, has been one of the Museum's most popular works since it was installed for the grand opening in 2002. Other sculptures installed for the exhibition include Greed's Trophy (1984), a 12-foot-high net of wire mesh; Desire (1981), a wooden wheel measuring 16-by-32 feet attached to an eight-foothigh basket; and Some Tales (1975-1978), six wooden segments of varying lengths, some of which resemble saws, spanning 30 horizontal feet of wall space. The sculptures examine a chronological evolution, demonstrating how the artist refers to earlier ideas, reinterpreting familiar themes. Among these works are Puryear's Ring series of the late 1970s, his Stereotypes and Decoys sculptures of the 1980s, the vessellike forms of the 1990s, and the more allegorical work of recent years. From childhood into adolescence during the 1940s and '50s, Puryear constructed and crafted such objects as bows and arrows, furniture and guitars. As a teacher with the Peace Corps in Sierra Leone, he observed and learned the craft of local carpenters. Puryear spent two years at the Swedish Royal Academy of Art in Stockholm, where he began working on independent sculptural projects investigating popular craft traditions and modern Scandinavian design. Returning to the United States to complete a master's degree and to begin teaching, Puryear resumed his studies during the 1980s, centering upon Japanese architecture and garden design. He has concentrated exclusively upon his own artistry since the late 1980s. The exhibition, running through May 18, is organized by the Museum of Modern Art, New York. Special exhibitions are included in general museum admission, in the $4-to-$10 range; free of charge to children 12 and younger, and free of charge for Modern members. On the Web: www.themodern.org FWC Contact Price at mprice@bizpress.net Clockwise from above left; Old Moles; Sharp and Flat; Greed's Trophy; Some Tales 18 Fort Worth Culture / Spring 08 Spring 08 / Fort Worth Culture 19 museums Sid Richardson Museum Downtown museum marks 26th anniversary By Michael H. Price isitors can expect a thoroughly refurbished environment at the long-established Sid Richardson Museum, which marks its 26th anniversary this year with some striking renovations and a generous deployment of paintings. An international destination among admirers of the art of the Old West, the downtown museum features works by Frederic Remington (1861-1909), Charles M. Russell (1864-1926), and other artists. The source is the personal collection of the pioneering Texas oilman Sid W. V Charles M. Russell, When White Men Turn Red Richardson (1891-1959). Thirty-nine paintings from the permanent collection are on view this spring. Formerly known as the Sid Richardson Collection of Western Art, the museum is perhaps better known by its familiar name among downtown habitués: "The Sid." Its formidable collection of Remingtons and Russells in the United States was accumulated as the result of Sid Richardson's friendship with publisher Amon Carter - namesake, of course, of Fort Worth's similarly influential showplace for frontier art, the Carter Museum. Taken together, with the finishing touch of an impressive archive of historic photographs at Fort Worth's Stockyards Museum, these institutions convey a near-comprehensive view of the history of the Southwestern borderlands. Since the Richardson's opening in 1982, nearly a million visitors have toured the address at 309 Main Street. Recent expansion and renovations, as supervised by architect David M. Schwarz, have included a bold new façade, redesigned exhibition spaces, a new education resource center, a new group-entry area, and an enlarged Museum Store. "After a quarter of a century, it was time for a complete makeover," said Jan Scott, the museum's director. The new façade expresses a more direct appeal to pedestrian traffic, reflecting the humanscale dimension that has long characterized the downtown area known as Sundance Square. The exterior features red granite from the Texas Hill Country, adorned with bronzed-brass buffalo medallions. Gallery space was reconfigured to allow simultaneous exhibition of works from the collection and special exhibitions. The project expanded the facility from 4,370 square feet to 6,340. And new lighting enhances the character of each painting, as if reading the mind of each artist as to how this or that work of art should be seen. New framing, too, evokes the period of the late 1800s and early 1900s. The museum retained National Gallery of Art Deputy Chief of Design Gordon Anson to design the lighting of the exhibition spaces. R. Wayne Reynolds, director of business development and new product design of Julius Lowy Frame & Restoring Company Inc., New York, created the frames. Nancy K. Anderson, the National Gallery of Art's curator of American and British paintings, developed the exhibition plan. On the Web: www.sidrichardsonmuseum.org FWC Contact Price at mprice@bizpress.net Clockwise from top: Charles M. Russell, Utica (A Quiet day in Utica); Frederic Remington, The Dry Camp; Charles M. Russell, The Bucker. 20 Fort Worth Culture / Spring 08 Spring 08 / Fort Worth Culture 21 art Gracey Tune Arts Fifth Avenue Keeping in tune By Ken Parish Perkins This is what I am supposed to be doing. I'm not about to give up and run away. - Gracey Tune he story of the opening of Arts Fifth Avenue on Sept. 11, 2001, has been told and re-told by co-founder Gracey Tune - though not necessarily for the sake of repetition. That any such enterprise was trying to find its footing at the same moment the country came to a screeching halt is dramatic enough, without having to result to theatrics. One quality always stands out when Tune tells of the day this south side gathering-place came into being, on a day remembered for its concentration of terrorist attacks. That is the more modest recollection of how people showed up there, anyhow, not looking for the arts per se, but just looking. Why they'd find themselves there, of all places, was intriguing then for Tune and partner Eddie Dunlap, who had brought over his famed Mondo Drummers educational program from the Eastside Neighborhood Arts Center. But with the passage of time, it all makes perfect sense. Arts Fifth Avenue has been around only seven years but has already earned a reputation as a focus of Fort Worth's grass-roots consciousness of cultural diversity and an artistic world-view. Call it the little train that could, can - and often does, to borrow a classic cliché from children's literature. "I had a few students come in that day, and it was almost like we huddled T Spring 08 / Fort Worth Culture 23 PHOTO BY JON P. UZZEL here and said we must protect our children and our families," Tune says."And in that, there was this strength within us that carried over that first year. Even though we thought it was a horrible situation, we felt that this was going to be a place where we'll be safe. That in this midst of a tragedy and horror, there was some little seed that was planted for growth." The seed that Tune and Dunlap planted at Arts Fifth Avenue has certainly grown, putting the enterprise in the category of arts institution survivorship - an impressive accomplishment in a shaky economy. AFA's $145,000 budget is higher than the $90,000 it took to run things last year, and at times Tune wonders if she has overreached. The optimism comes from success: 7,000 classes conducted by local and nationally recognized artists in the visual and performing arts. More than 500 performances by such diversified artists as tap dancer Sarah Petronio and jazz legend Marchel Ivery. Dozens of art exhibits. With classes in - take a deep breath, here - salsa, zumba, acting, ballet, guitar, hip-hop, chorus, drums, a home-school curriculum, sculpture workshops, public school art teachers' forums and an annual celebration of El Dia de los Muertos, AFA offers a heavenly haven for both the cultural connoisseurs and the curious souls. "I really admire her dedication, her passion and the amount of sacrifice to keep that place alive and make it so all-encompassing and inviting," says musician Sevan Melikyan, who approached Tune about bringing in the Jamaican reggae drummer Dyrol Randall and bass player Robert Higgins. Her answer: We can make that happen. She even suggested the idea of workshops in the Jamaican reggae style. The process took a few weeks to prepare and was staged early this year. Tune has been many things: choreographer, artistic director, lecturer, director, producer and tap dancer from a performing family - her brother is the terrific Tommy Tune, who scarcely requires an introduction - and recipient in 2005 of the North Texas Dance Council's Texas Tap Legends Award. But providing arts opportunities to a vast audience will be Tune's legacy. Still, while AFA has managed to get local funding - the Arts Council of Fort Worth & Tarrant County has provided a grant that allows access to a public relations company to handle marketing - the big-money donors haven't come around. AFA relies heavily on volunteers to handle tasks from running the box office to mopping floors. That the lights are still on doesn't mean that keeping them on hasn't been a struggle. "You don't want to say that things are tough or hard because it doesn't paint the picture that you are going forward," Tune says. "But to be honest and true, it's been very difficult." That's why Tune has tried to get out of the building more to drum up support, talking with groups and foundations. The outreach shows signs of success. Fairmont-district neighbors raised $600 by throwing a Christmas party. "The times get really tough," Tune says,"and you start to say, 'Gee, are we going to make it?'" There are no guarantees in the world of non-profit arts, Tune and Dunlap say - only guarantees that Arts Fifth Avenue will continue to provide as long as the building is standing and they are in it. The plan is to move forward by changing nothing: There are Shakespeare in the Parking Lot and a Hispanic Playwrights Festival in need of producing, not to mention belly dancing and jazz. "A man once said,'This is your curse,' because I was put here to do this," Tune says. (Dunlap's mother calls AFA his "affliction.") Tune doesn't see it as a curse at all. "It's a gift," she says."This is what I am supposed to be doing. I'm not about to give up and run away." FWC Contact Perkins at bizpress@bizpress.net 24 Fort Worth Culture / Spring 08 PHOTO BY JON P. UZZEL music PHOTO BY GLEN E. ELLMAN Tom Kellam Past nourishes future Public Library's Jazz Preservation Project By Tom Kellam At the end of the 1950s, jazz underwent its greatest revolution since the beginnings of the bebop movement some 20 years before. he jazz-making traditions of Fort Worth run deep and wide. Tradition sustains and advances itself through continuing activity, of course - but its lasting documentation must involve a conscious effort for preservation, lest crucial traces of the origins become scattered. The scene today includes such high points as each fall's Jazz by the Boulevard Festival; pianist Johnny Case's generation-long showcase engagement at Sardines Ristorante Italiano; drummer Adonis Rose's development of the Fort Worth Jazz Orchestra, with its McDavid Studio/Bass Hall connections; and the recent opening of the downtown area's Scat Jazz Lounge. The idea of an archival collection devoted to the T local history of jazz emerged in the summer of 2003, in the weeks leading up to the first Jazz by the Boulevard event. Donna Van Ness, as an organizer, visited my office one afternoon to invite the Fort Worth Public Library's participation. She suggested that the library begin building a collection devoted to the history of jazz in Fort Worth, and she invited us to set up a booth at the festival. As an archivist and a jazz fan, I was intrigued by the idea - although I must confess that, at the time, I knew next to nothing about any jazz roots in my hometown. I was vaguely aware of the curious fact that several fairly big names in jazz had some connection with Fort Worth. Ornette Coleman, Dewey Redman and Ronald Shannon Jackson came to mind. I Spring 08 / Fort Worth Culture 27 had heard these artists, generally at the Caravan of Dreams during its 18 years as a local haven for jazz. My impression was that their artistic lives had begun only after they had left Fort Worth. A few days of research revealed a history of which - I'm embarrassed to admit - I'd been completely unaware. This city has long been home to a musical culture that has nurtured several generations of jazz artists. Music historian Dave Oliphant sums matters up concisely in his Handbook of Texas article on jazz in Texas: "At the end of the 1950s, jazz underwent its greatest revolution since the beginnings of the bebop movement some 20 years before," notes Oliphant."In 1958, Ornette Coleman of Fort Worth initiated what he labeled . Change of the Century and Free Jazz . Many of his protégés were also natives of Fort Worth, [including] tenorist Dewey Redman and drummers Charles Moffett and Ronald Shannon Jackson." Oliphant cites still earlier roots in such Fort Worth artists as drummer Ray McKinley and tenorist Tex Beneke, both of the Glenn Miller Orchestra. Some of the most important names in jazz, representing just about every major style - big-band, bebop, free jazz, you-name-it - have roots right here in Fort Worth. But beyond people in the local jazz community, this history had been completely unknown, and in mortal danger of being lost. At this point, Donna Van Ness' idea of a jazz archive seemed not just interesting; it seemed essential. Thus the Jazz Preservation Project was founded. The Library's Genealogy, Archives & History Unit has become a consistent presence at the Jazz by the Boulevard Festival each September. We have a Jazz History & Archives booth, where we feature exhibits and provide literature about the Jazz Preservation Project. We have also sponsored lectures by such music-history scholars as Dave Oliphant and Michael H. Price, performances and poetry slams. Building an archival collection of this scale can be slow going. While we have several potential donors, the actual file-transfer process can be tedious and time-consuming. But we do have serious commitments, and records are slowly coming in. One of our most rewarding projects has been our oral-history program, Jazz Perspectives. This is a series of interviews we have done in cooperation with the Fort Worth City Cable Channel. Over the last year and a half, we have completed six interviews, including Marjorie Crenshaw of the Fort Worth Jazz Society, big-band era musician Curley Broiles and pianist Johnny Case. We have also collected archival footage featuring Dewey Redman and other local jazz greats from Sarah Walker's African-American documentary series They Showed the Way, which can be seen on the City Cable Channel. And the Jazz Preservation Project has been enhanced by other collections in our archives. For example, the Tarrant County Black Historical and Genealogical Society Collection contains information on the neighborhoods that nurtured the early jazz community in Fort Worth, and on early jazz venues such as the Jim Hotel. The society's records also provide valuable information on the history of I.M. Terrell High School, where many of our local jazz greats were educated. A couple of years ago, we acquired a fascinating collection of manuscripts, pamphlets, flyers and many photographs related to the Rocket Club, a Jacksboro Highway venue that had featured a lively bigband scene during the late 1940s and early 1950s. We are also interested in the urban geography of jazz history in Fort Worth. We want to identify the neighborhoods that nurtured the art form, to identify the places where jazz was most frequently played and celebrated. Jazz is universal in its appeal, embracing varied forms ranging from Western swing, big-band, Dixieland and bebop to the avant-garde work of Ornette Coleman. The deepest roots of jazz can be located in AfricanAmerican sources - an essential part of the cultural life of Fort Worth's African-American communities. It is our hope that the archival collection we are building will help to identify the people and places important to the history of jazz in Fort Worth, and that it will help to continue the growth and development of jazz in the neighborhoods where it traditionally has flourished. FWC Tom Kellam chronicles the city's cultural and economic history as senior librarian and archivist with the Fort Worth Public Library. Contact: tkellam@fortworthlibrary.org 28 Fort Worth Culture / Spring 08 PHOTO BY GLEN E. ELLMAN
Fort Worth ulture SPRING 08 The Bass Hall decade ... Fort Worth's Jazz Heritage ... Gracey Tune & Arts Fifth Avenue ... Four great museums anniversary Bass Performance Hall A 10th anniversary By Michael H. Price Bass Performance Hall has decisively stretched the boundaries of Fort Worth's Cultural District to embrace the downtown area. N early 10 years have passed since the opening of Nancy Lee and Perry R. Bass Performance Hall as the last great concert venue of the 20th century. The timing might as well have suggested the rise of a new century's first great concert hall, for the Bass - with its forward-thinking acoustical versatility and its willingness to engage in the promotion of artistry for the sake of art - anticipated a New Millennium more so than it looked backward to its kindred ancestral showplaces of the Old World or early-day America. A 10th Anniversary Festival is a foregone conclusion. The dates are April 29-May 4, reflecting the watershed opening of 1998. The events will include these: . An April 29 showcase for gifted schoolchildren, including performances from the the Paschal High School Jazz Band and the All-City Honor Choir. . An admission-free performance April 30 from roots-music ace Jack Ingram. . A jazz blowout May 1, featuring Chuck Mangione and Dianne Reeves. . A formal anniversary-date concert May 3, featuring Liza Minnelli. . And a May 4 gospel extravaganza featuring Fort Worth native Kirk Franklin. (Web: www.basshall.com) Along with the close-by Sid Richardson Museum, Bass Performance Hall has decisively stretched the boundaries of Fort Worth's Cultural District to embrace the downtown area. The Bass' masterstroke - apart from its savvy home-base affiliations with the Fort Worth Symphony, Texas Ballet Theatre, the Fort Worth Opera and the Cliburn Competition - is that of operating a Children's Education Program as a perpetual-motion function of the operating agency, Performing Arts Fort Worth. The educational outreach assures that schoolchildren from throughout the area are granted access to musical finery as a matter of routine. The very acoustics of the hall have helped to hone the Fort Worth Symphony, in particular, to a sonic near-perfection that suggests candidacy for popular regard among the Top Five American orchestras. The FW Symphony's success with a recent début at New York's Carnegie Hall owes much to the stimu- PHOTO BY JON P. UZZEL lus of the orchestra's extended workout in a fine local hall. A more-than-figurative kinship between the Bass and the Carnegie derives in part from Bass-family ties to both institutions. There are more nuanced connections, as well: In 2001, when the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition settled into Bass Hall as a base of operations, I booked a classicalpiano film festival into the nearby Palace Theatre as a show of solidarity - concentrating upon favorite motion pictures selected by Van Cliburn himself. One of the movies was Edgar G. Ulmer's Carnegie Hall (1947), whose array of personalities includes the celebrated conductor Artur Rodzinsky (18921958), father of the Cliburn Foundation's Richard Rodzinsky. Small world. As developer Edward P. Bass has explained: Bass Hall "was built entirely with privately contributed funds, and it operates as a civic-oriented nonprofit for the benefit of our community." Financial challenges may surface from time to time, given the mer- curial nature of show business, but the dedication to permanence persists. "We're building our audiences for tomorrow," as Paul Beard, managing director, has noted."We present many shows, and we're at risk . [What] sustains the hall is our consistent success in presenting shows to our economic benefit. The purpose of that benefit is to cover the expense we incur in accommodating the resident companies." Not to mention that the 2,056-seat hall, as designed by David M. Schwarz' Architectural Services Inc., has settled into the skyline as an iconic evocation of the classic European opera-house style, with an inviting human-scale accessibility. Every show-business venture needs its "angels," too - but the angels adorning the Bass are literal as well as figurative: Marton Varo's two 48-foot Grand Façade sculptures serve a heralding presence that has drawn any number of visitors to the Commerce Street landmark - and suggest a guardianship over Bass Hall to match the Bass' proven guardianship of the fine and popular arts. FWC Contact Price at mprice@bizpress.net 4 Fort Worth Culture / Spring 08 Spring 08 / Fort Worth Culture 5 music Adonis Rose & the Fort Worth Jazz Orchestra A storm-driven merger of traditions By Michael H. Price Since early on in the last century, Fort Worth has nurtured a jazz-andblues heritage comparable with that of any other such burg short of New Orleans. he coastal panic of 2005 sent many residents of New Orleans ranging far afield in advance of the onslaught of Hurricane Katrina. Fort Worth, prominent among the earliest Southwestern cities to lend refuge, became as a result a new home base for the acclaimed percussionist Adonis Rose. Rose - who has worked with such marquee names as Harry Connick Jr. and Wynton Marsalis - returned the courtesy by founding the Fort Worth Jazz Orchestra, a 16piece ensemble dedicated to a combination of preservation and newly commissioned artistry. From beginnings in association with Bass Performance Hall's McDavid Studio satellite, the Fort Worth Jazz Orchestra has performed and recorded extensively while Rose has persisted as a solo artist. His more recent projects include the development of an ensemble known as the N.O. Vaders, in addition to contributions to the musical score of Spike Lee's recent documentary film about the Katrina disaster, When the Levees Broke. Rose, born in 1975 in New Orleans, is hip to it that his town has always generated more jazz than it knows what to do with. The haunted Crescent City learned early on to consume all it can and then export the rest - a jazz-independent society that has rendered the rest of the world thoroughly dependent upon jazz. And all the better for it. The old-timers will swear that jazz, blaring forth from the brass and the reeds and the Talking Drums of African origin, is the sonic levee that held a phantom menace at bay during New Orleans' Great Axe-Man Scare of 1918-1919. Amid a siege of wholesale murder, The Times-Picayune fielded a letter-to-the-editor from some fool professing to be the rampaging Axe-Man - and vowing to spare the jazz enthusiasts. Call it Blues Passover. Did Buddy Bolden, that mighty founding bugler of 19th-century jazz, propel New Orleans into the culture-at-large? Maybe not in a direct sense, although those same oldtime legend-bearers who tell of the Axe-Man will aver that Bolden's horn could be heard for miles away from wherever he happened to be blasting. Certainly, Bolden's influence fueled the passions of those Orleanians who would range more freely through space and time - King Oliver, Jelly Roll Morton, Louis Armstrong, Sidney Bechét - seeding the music into Kansas City and Chicago and Manhattan and St. Louis and Fort Worth. Since early on in the last century, Fort Worth has nurtured a jazz-and-blues heritage comparable with that of any other such burg short of N.O. And how else to explain Euday Bowman and Red Connor and Ornette Coleman and Tex Beneke and the archetypal jazz-in-a-Stetson of Bob Wills? The localized influences have proved too varied, however, to permit one identity as iconic as that which Louis Armstrong has provided to New Orleans. A singer from Fort Worth named Milton Brown, who had insinuated W.C. Handy's "St. Louis Blues" into Wills' hoedown fiddle-band repertoire in 1929, interlaced Fred Calhoun's jazz piano with prototypical Western Swing early in the T 1930s with one crucial song: New Orleans' emblematic "Tiger Rag." You get the picture. New Orleans, of course, has disseminated its indigenous music to telling effect since the day of Jelly Roll Morton, though with seldom a pressing need to disperse its populace in the bargain. The onslaught of Hurricane Katrina sent innumerable Louisianans inland to Texas. Adonis Rose, one in a jillion, came aground in Fort Worth with his music as essential gear. And as a New Orleanian traditionalist-plusinnovator (or N.O. Vader, to crib from his playful terminology), Rose recognized Fort Worth straightaway as fertile ground for a transplant. New Orleans' loss - Fort Worth's gain, acknowledged with gratitude. Rose's establishment of the Fort Worth Jazz Orchestra merges the heritage of both cities in a striking manner. Rose's N.O. Vaders ensemble advances the Crescent identity, reaching back and looking forward with nary a lapsed beat. "I miss New Orleans.," says Rose."But now I feel it's a perfect time for me to . bring my experiences here, along with the music of New Orleans." A historic precedent bears remembering: Malcolm "Dr. John" Rebennack developed his greater identity as a musical ambassador from New Orleans only after he had sidetracked himself to New York and L.A. in indignant response to a 20th-century catastrophe - Jim Garrison's politically motivated campaign to sanitize N.O.'s rambunctious French Quarter. Likewise, in a sense, with Adonis Rose. Best of both worlds. FWC Contact Price at mprice@bizpress.net Adonis Rose 12 Fort Worth Culture / Spring 08 museums Fort Worth Circle at Carter Museum Mo'dern' modern art from Texas By Michael H. Price he Fort Worth Circle - a fabled and enduringly relevant Cynthia Brants (1924-2006), who remained a working artist despite her colony of artists who helped to re-define art as a class during retrospective regard of the Circle as a relic. the 1940s and '50s - comes full-circle in a massive exhibition "It was natural and inevitable that our work was relegated to history on view at the Amon Carter Museum. The styles of painting and no longer considered relevant to Fort Worth's ambitions for continuand etching are too wildly diversified to allow any simple description: One ing cultural prominence in the visual arts," Brants said in connection with might say the members shared a determination to describe how it felt to that 2005 showing."It was, however, sufficient for us to have opened some be alive at a time of unbridled creative enthusiasm and reciprocal encoureyes to a wider range of possibilities in painting and sculpture than had agement. been previously accepted." The most lasting direct tangents have surfaced The display of nearly 100 striking examples is called Intimate in the performing arts, via such deeply rooted Fort Worth troupes as Hip Modernism: Fort Worth Circle Artists in the 1940s, the first such industrialPocket Theatre and SceneShop. strength retrospective in more than 20 years. If some of the works suggest The history of the Fort Worth Circle will find amplification and intermusic to those discovering the Circle for the first time, it might be helpful pretation in a variety of lectures and participatory activities. A recent talk to mention that Stravinsky and Ravel were among the members' preferred by Fort Worth-based historian Quentin McGown has covered 16 works composers; at the time of the Circle's launching, the modern-jazz moveby Bror Utter (1913-1993), as commissioned by the pioneering Fort ment had not quite taken a decisive form. Worth preservationist Sam Cantey III during the 1950s to chronicle the More than 50 years is more like it, in the case of many of the featured city's rapidly disappearing early-day architecture. (These watercolors are works. Some privately held pieces have gone that long without a publican exhibition in themselves.) viewing showcase, as organizing curaThen at 11 a.m. March 29, the celetor Jane Myers points out. brated art critic and author Dave The styles are as varied as the perHickey, formerly of Fort Worth, will sonalities who made up the Fort deliver a talk called "Fort Worth: How Worth Circle, but together the selecCowtown Became a Center for Art in tions tell nothing less than "the tale of the West," placing the local movement how progressive art came to Texas," in a broader context. Hickey, now adds Myers. Schaeffer professor of modern letters "The history of art in Fort Worth at the University of Nevada, Las goes back more than 100 years," as the Vegas, is a widely published authority historian-exhibitor Glenna Crocker whose contextual knowledge of prowrote to herald a 2005 Monticello gressive art is unsurpassed. Gallery show that placed the Fort The Fort Worth Circle radiated Worth Circle in context with Texas' from a nucleus of four locals, then in earlier artistic movements."The social their mid-20s, who met as students at and political posturing of those eras the Fort Worth School of Fine Arts: [since the 1940s] forever changed the Lia Cuilty, Veronica Helfensteller, creativity of the art world . [The Marjorie Johnson and Bror Utter. Just influence of the Circle] continues prior to America's involvement in today, although somewhat obscured by World War II, Dickson Reeder, a the influx of a multitude of modern school-days friend of Utter's, assumed contemporaries." Adventurous artists, leadership. Reeder and his New Yorkthat is, without direct ties to the speborn wife, Flora Blanc, provided the cific hometown background. social glue that bonded the group The advancement of the Circle's together. Also in the sphere were Sara influence into a new century had restShannon and William P."Bill" Bomar Marjorie Johnson Lee, Studio Corner ed largely with the abstract painter Jr. (The influential Reeder School of T Dickson Reeder, Portrait of Bill Bomar Lia Cuilty, Arrested Flight Theater & Design for Children will be the subject of a staged presentation on April 5-6 and April 11-12 by Hip Pocket Theatre, at the neighboring Community Arts Center.) Reeder, Bomar and Helfensteller shared in common a background in private art instruction. Kelly Fearing entered the circle as a newcomer to Fort Worth during the war. In 1945, Cynthia Brants (recently the subject of a memorial retrospective at Albany, Texas' Old Jail Art Center) became the youngest female member. George Grammer, youngest among the artists, joined in 1946. Drawn together by a shared interest in art, dance, music, theater and myth-making, the artists of the Fort Worth Circle sought new avenues of artistic expression as a departure from a prevailing preference for regionalism and other, more conservative, artistic styles. They also shared a fascination with fantastic, often enigmatic imagery that often infiltrates otherwise lifelike portraiture and deceptively conventional regional landscapes. Members of the Circle responded to modernism in art by creating a unique aesthetic based upon contemporary surrealism and abstraction - drawing largely upon the power of imagination. Their determined ascent to prominence proved lasting, as well. By the mid-1950s, the group's aesthetic gave way to newer ideas, but the shared view of art as a vista without boundaries persisted. The members became, in turn, significant as teachers while remaining produc- tive artists. Individual works can be found today in various museums and private collections; the Carter Museum's exhibition presents a unique opportunity to view the works together. Intimate Modernism: Fort Worth Circle Artists in the 1940s is accompanied by a catalogue of the same title. With more than 140 full-color reproductions, the publication can only stand as the definitive account of the movement. The annotated reproductions are accompanied by biographical notes and photographs. Other Fort Worth Circle activities will include Hip Pocket Theatre's Dickson School tribute, Tempest in a Dream, will perform at 7 p.m. April 5, 2 p.m. April 6, and 7 p.m. April 11-12 at the Community Art Center. And on April 12-13, the Center for the Advancement & Study of Early Texas Art (CASETA) will stage a symposium at the neighboring University of North Texas Health Science Center - prefacing the event with an April 11 reception at the Carter Museum. A detailed agenda can be found on the Web at www.caseta.org. FWC Contact Price at mprice@bizpress.net 14 Fort Worth Culture / Spring 08 Spring 08 / Fort Worth Culture 15 museums Kimbell Art Museum An impressive Impressionist impression By Michael H. Price he Art define the Institute of Impressionist Chicago achievement - widely will pay an reproduced paintings extended visit during the that will be familiar summer to Fort Worth. even to those who The occasion - have never visited the announced for June 29Art Institute. These Nov. 2 - is a loan of include the likes of some 90 paintings from Paris Street; Rainy Day the Art Institute's (1877), by Gustave renowned Impressionist Caillebotte; seven collection to Fort Cézannes, including Worth's Kimbell Art Madame Cézanne in a Museum. Yellow Chair Small world, indeed: (1893-95) and The The exhibition stems Bathers (1899-1904); from an ambitious resix Degases, including installation and expanYellow Dancers (In the sion project at the Art Wings) (1874-76) Institute, involving reno- Claude Monet, Stacks of Wheat (Sunset, Snow Effect), 1890-91. and The Millinery vation of the galleries Shop (1884-90); and the construction of seven Gauguins, including The Arlésiennes (1888) and The Ancestors of a new Modern Wing designed by Renzo Piano. Piano, in turn, is the Tehamana (1893); five Van Goghs, including Self-Portrait (1887) and The architect recently chosen by the Kimbell to design a neighboring building Bedroom (1889); seven Manets, including The Races at Longchamp (1866) within the Cultural District. The Art Institute's Impressionist collection and Woman Reading (1878-79); 26 Monets, including six paintings depicthas never left Chicago heretofore in such a large group. The selection will ing wheat stacks, four depicting London and three portraying water lilies; be shown exclusively at the Kimbell. 12 Renoirs, including Lunch at the Restaurant Fournaise (1875), Acrobats at The Impressionists: Master Paintings from the Art Institute of Chicago can only the Cirque Fernando (1879), and Two Sisters (On the Terrace) (1881); and surpass a terrific Barnes Collection exhibition, as seen 14 years ago at the three Toulouse-Lautrecs, including Moulin de la Galette (1889). Kimbell. The new show will feature masterpieces from the likes of The Art Institute of Chicago will open its Modern Wing in 2009. The Edouard Manet, Edgar Degas, Claude Monet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, movement of the modern and contemporary collections into the new Paul Cézanne, Paul Gauguin, Vincent Van Gogh and Henri de Toulouse- building offers the opportunity to reinstall earlier collections - including Lautrec. This succession of geniuses, as if by cosmic coincidence, worked the Impressionists - in renovated galleries. largely in the same country and within the approximate span of a shared During the Chicago overhaul, certain collections must be moved or lifetime. stored. The temporary relocation of the Impressionist collection created a Such painters of then-modern life created a new method of regarding unique opportunity for the Art Institute's greatest works to be shown one's surroundings, at once dreamlike and recognizably genuine. Carried more widely, and the Kimbell's Malcolm Warner, as acting director, seized forward by the so-called Post-Impressionists - represented in the exhibithe moment. tion by evolved works from Cézanne, Van Gogh, and Gauguin - the Founded in 1879 as a strategic combination of museum and an art Impressionist movement advanced many audaciously progressive pictorial school, the Art Institute of Chicago is one of the artistic treasure houses arguments that pointed toward the increasing modernization of fine art, of the world. Its encyclopedic collection of some 250,000 works qualifies it intersecting ever more with commercial art and design, during the 20th as the third-largest museum in the United States. FWC century. The exhibition will bring to Fort Worth works that have come to Contact Price at mprice@bizpress.net T Paul Cézanne, The Basket of Apples, c. 1893. Vincent van Gogh, The Bedroom, 1889. Pierre Auguste Renoir, Acrobats at the Cirque Fernando (Francisca and Angelina Wartenburg), 1879. Spring 08 / Fort Worth Culture 16 Fort Worth Culture / Spring 08 17 museums Modern Art Museum Sculptural exhibition distinguishes MAM By Michael H. Price f any one element of Fort Worth's cultural landscape san be said to state a case for a Bold New Millennium, it is the 2002 landmark address of the Modern Art Museum, designed by architect Tadao Ando as a sculptural statement in itself. The Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth is at once the oldest such museum in Texas - chartered in 1892 - and handily the newest in aspect. As befits a monumental sculpture of architectural pedigree, the Modern in its new location at 3200 Darnell Street, has fared particularly well as a showcase for internal exhibitions of sculpture. The exhibit of the moment is Martin Puryear, on view through May 18. The retrospective survey of works by a celebrated American artist features nearly 50 sculptures in an arc reaching from Martin Puryear's first solo museum show in 1977 to the present day. Working primarily in wood, Puryear (born 1941) has maintained a commitment to manual skill and traditional building methods. His forms derive from everyday objects, both natural and man-made, including tools, vessels and furniture. His sculptures are rich with psychological and intellectual references, examining issues of identity, culture, and history. Cultural influences can be traced to his studies, his work and his travels in Africa, Asia, Europe and the United States. The Modern's chief curator, Michael Auping, explains:"Bringing the eye and hand of the woodworker to Minimalism's precise forms has been one of [Puryear's] most pointed contributions . Puryear's work has a way of sneaking up on us perceptually, and it is partially through his surfaces that we are drawn in, invited to inspect his wooden objects more closely, as one would a more intimate construction, through the subtlety of inflection that he at times imparts to the surface." Puryear's Ladder for Booker T. Washington (1996), is part of the permanent collection of the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth - and as such, an ideal element of familiar leverage into the greater body of the exhibition. The towering object was inspired by homemade ladders that Puryear had noticed in the French countryside while working at Alexander Calder's studio on an invitational grant. In a conversation five years ago with Auping, Puryear said:"It just occurred to me that this would be an interesting project to try to do, to make a very tall or long ladder . I had been interested in working with a kind of artificial perspective through sculpture, which if you think about it is not so easy to do. With a ladder, a I very long ladder, I could make a form that would appear to recede into space faster visually than it in fact does physically." And like the functional ladders that inspired it, Ladder for Booker T. Washington is made from a single sapling that the artist had split down the middle. He added rungs to form a 36-foot ladder that narrows to just over an inch wide at the top. This sculpture, reinstalled in the double-height concrete gallery for the present exhibition, has been one of the Museum's most popular works since it was installed for the grand opening in 2002. Other sculptures installed for the exhibition include Greed's Trophy (1984), a 12-foot-high net of wire mesh; Desire (1981), a wooden wheel measuring 16-by-32 feet attached to an eight-foothigh basket; and Some Tales (1975-1978), six wooden segments of varying lengths, some of which resemble saws, spanning 30 horizontal feet of wall space. The sculptures examine a chronological evolution, demonstrating how the artist refers to earlier ideas, reinterpreting familiar themes. Among these works are Puryear's Ring series of the late 1970s, his Stereotypes and Decoys sculptures of the 1980s, the vessellike forms of the 1990s, and the more allegorical work of recent years. From childhood into adolescence during the 1940s and '50s, Puryear constructed and crafted such objects as bows and arrows, furniture and guitars. As a teacher with the Peace Corps in Sierra Leone, he observed and learned the craft of local carpenters. Puryear spent two years at the Swedish Royal Academy of Art in Stockholm, where he began working on independent sculptural projects investigating popular craft traditions and modern Scandinavian design. Returning to the United States to complete a master's degree and to begin teaching, Puryear resumed his studies during the 1980s, centering upon Japanese architecture and garden design. He has concentrated exclusively upon his own artistry since the late 1980s. The exhibition, running through May 18, is organized by the Museum of Modern Art, New York. Special exhibitions are included in general museum admission, in the $4-to-$10 range; free of charge to children 12 and younger, and free of charge for Modern members. On the Web: www.themodern.org FWC Contact Price at mprice@bizpress.net Clockwise from above left; Old Moles; Sharp and Flat; Greed's Trophy; Some Tales 18 Fort Worth Culture / Spring 08 Spring 08 / Fort Worth Culture 19 museums Sid Richardson Museum Downtown museum marks 26th anniversary By Michael H. Price isitors can expect a thoroughly refurbished environment at the long-established Sid Richardson Museum, which marks its 26th anniversary this year with some striking renovations and a generous deployment of paintings. An international destination among admirers of the art of the Old West, the downtown museum features works by Frederic Remington (1861-1909), Charles M. Russell (1864-1926), and other artists. The source is the personal collection of the pioneering Texas oilman Sid W. V Charles M. Russell, When White Men Turn Red Richardson (1891-1959). Thirty-nine paintings from the permanent collection are on view this spring. Formerly known as the Sid Richardson Collection of Western Art, the museum is perhaps better known by its familiar name among downtown habitués: "The Sid." Its formidable collection of Remingtons and Russells in the United States was accumulated as the result of Sid Richardson's friendship with publisher Amon Carter - namesake, of course, of Fort Worth's similarly influential showplace for frontier art, the Carter Museum. Taken together, with the finishing touch of an impressive archive of historic photographs at Fort Worth's Stockyards Museum, these institutions convey a near-comprehensive view of the history of the Southwestern borderlands. Since the Richardson's opening in 1982, nearly a million visitors have toured the address at 309 Main Street. Recent expansion and renovations, as supervised by architect David M. Schwarz, have included a bold new façade, redesigned exhibition spaces, a new education resource center, a new group-entry area, and an enlarged Museum Store. "After a quarter of a century, it was time for a complete makeover," said Jan Scott, the museum's director. The new façade expresses a more direct appeal to pedestrian traffic, reflecting the humanscale dimension that has long characterized the downtown area known as Sundance Square. The exterior features red granite from the Texas Hill Country, adorned with bronzed-brass buffalo medallions. Gallery space was reconfigured to allow simultaneous exhibition of works from the collection and special exhibitions. The project expanded the facility from 4,370 square feet to 6,340. And new lighting enhances the character of each painting, as if reading the mind of each artist as to how this or that work of art should be seen. New framing, too, evokes the period of the late 1800s and early 1900s. The museum retained National Gallery of Art Deputy Chief of Design Gordon Anson to design the lighting of the exhibition spaces. R. Wayne Reynolds, director of business development and new product design of Julius Lowy Frame & Restoring Company Inc., New York, created the frames. Nancy K. Anderson, the National Gallery of Art's curator of American and British paintings, developed the exhibition plan. On the Web: www.sidrichardsonmuseum.org FWC Contact Price at mprice@bizpress.net Clockwise from top: Charles M. Russell, Utica (A Quiet day in Utica); Frederic Remington, The Dry Camp; Charles M. Russell, The Bucker. 20 Fort Worth Culture / Spring 08 Spring 08 / Fort Worth Culture 21 art Gracey Tune Arts Fifth Avenue Keeping in tune By Ken Parish Perkins This is what I am supposed to be doing. I'm not about to give up and run away. - Gracey Tune he story of the opening of Arts Fifth Avenue on Sept. 11, 2001, has been told and re-told by co-founder Gracey Tune - though not necessarily for the sake of repetition. That any such enterprise was trying to find its footing at the same moment the country came to a screeching halt is dramatic enough, without having to result to theatrics. One quality always stands out when Tune tells of the day this south side gathering-place came into being, on a day remembered for its concentration of terrorist attacks. That is the more modest recollection of how people showed up there, anyhow, not looking for the arts per se, but just looking. Why they'd find themselves there, of all places, was intriguing then for Tune and partner Eddie Dunlap, who had brought over his famed Mondo Drummers educational program from the Eastside Neighborhood Arts Center. But with the passage of time, it all makes perfect sense. Arts Fifth Avenue has been around only seven years but has already earned a reputation as a focus of Fort Worth's grass-roots consciousness of cultural diversity and an artistic world-view. Call it the little train that could, can - and often does, to borrow a classic cliché from children's literature. "I had a few students come in that day, and it was almost like we huddled T Spring 08 / Fort Worth Culture 23 PHOTO BY JON P. UZZEL here and said we must protect our children and our families," Tune says."And in that, there was this strength within us that carried over that first year. Even though we thought it was a horrible situation, we felt that this was going to be a place where we'll be safe. That in this midst of a tragedy and horror, there was some little seed that was planted for growth." The seed that Tune and Dunlap planted at Arts Fifth Avenue has certainly grown, putting the enterprise in the category of arts institution survivorship - an impressive accomplishment in a shaky economy. AFA's $145,000 budget is higher than the $90,000 it took to run things last year, and at times Tune wonders if she has overreached. The optimism comes from success: 7,000 classes conducted by local and nationally recognized artists in the visual and performing arts. More than 500 performances by such diversified artists as tap dancer Sarah Petronio and jazz legend Marchel Ivery. Dozens of art exhibits. With classes in - take a deep breath, here - salsa, zumba, acting, ballet, guitar, hip-hop, chorus, drums, a home-school curriculum, sculpture workshops, public school art teachers' forums and an annual celebration of El Dia de los Muertos, AFA offers a heavenly haven for both the cultural connoisseurs and the curious souls. "I really admire her dedication, her passion and the amount of sacrifice to keep that place alive and make it so all-encompassing and inviting," says musician Sevan Melikyan, who approached Tune about bringing in the Jamaican reggae drummer Dyrol Randall and bass player Robert Higgins. Her answer: We can make that happen. She even suggested the idea of workshops in the Jamaican reggae style. The process took a few weeks to prepare and was staged early this year. Tune has been many things: choreographer, artistic director, lecturer, director, producer and tap dancer from a performing family - her brother is the terrific Tommy Tune, who scarcely requires an introduction - and recipient in 2005 of the North Texas Dance Council's Texas Tap Legends Award. But providing arts opportunities to a vast audience will be Tune's legacy. Still, while AFA has managed to get local funding - the Arts Council of Fort Worth & Tarrant County has provided a grant that allows access to a public relations company to handle marketing - the big-money donors haven't come around. AFA relies heavily on volunteers to handle tasks from running the box office to mopping floors. That the lights are still on doesn't mean that keeping them on hasn't been a struggle. "You don't want to say that things are tough or hard because it doesn't paint the picture that you are going forward," Tune says. "But to be honest and true, it's been very difficult." That's why Tune has tried to get out of the building more to drum up support, talking with groups and foundations. The outreach shows signs of success. Fairmont-district neighbors raised $600 by throwing a Christmas party. "The times get really tough," Tune says,"and you start to say, 'Gee, are we going to make it?'" There are no guarantees in the world of non-profit arts, Tune and Dunlap say - only guarantees that Arts Fifth Avenue will continue to provide as long as the building is standing and they are in it. The plan is to move forward by changing nothing: There are Shakespeare in the Parking Lot and a Hispanic Playwrights Festival in need of producing, not to mention belly dancing and jazz. "A man once said,'This is your curse,' because I was put here to do this," Tune says. (Dunlap's mother calls AFA his "affliction.") Tune doesn't see it as a curse at all. "It's a gift," she says."This is what I am supposed to be doing. I'm not about to give up and run away." FWC Contact Perkins at bizpress@bizpress.net 24 Fort Worth Culture / Spring 08 PHOTO BY JON P. UZZEL music PHOTO BY GLEN E. ELLMAN Tom Kellam Past nourishes future Public Library's Jazz Preservation Project By Tom Kellam At the end of the 1950s, jazz underwent its greatest revolution since the beginnings of the bebop movement some 20 years before. he jazz-making traditions of Fort Worth run deep and wide. Tradition sustains and advances itself through continuing activity, of course - but its lasting documentation must involve a conscious effort for preservation, lest crucial traces of the origins become scattered. The scene today includes such high points as each fall's Jazz by the Boulevard Festival; pianist Johnny Case's generation-long showcase engagement at Sardines Ristorante Italiano; drummer Adonis Rose's development of the Fort Worth Jazz Orchestra, with its McDavid Studio/Bass Hall connections; and the recent opening of the downtown area's Scat Jazz Lounge. The idea of an archival collection devoted to the T local history of jazz emerged in the summer of 2003, in the weeks leading up to the first Jazz by the Boulevard event. Donna Van Ness, as an organizer, visited my office one afternoon to invite the Fort Worth Public Library's participation. She suggested that the library begin building a collection devoted to the history of jazz in Fort Worth, and she invited us to set up a booth at the festival. As an archivist and a jazz fan, I was intrigued by the idea - although I must confess that, at the time, I knew next to nothing about any jazz roots in my hometown. I was vaguely aware of the curious fact that several fairly big names in jazz had some connection with Fort Worth. Ornette Coleman, Dewey Redman and Ronald Shannon Jackson came to mind. I Spring 08 / Fort Worth Culture 27 had heard these artists, generally at the Caravan of Dreams during its 18 years as a local haven for jazz. My impression was that their artistic lives had begun only after they had left Fort Worth. A few days of research revealed a history of which - I'm embarrassed to admit - I'd been completely unaware. This city has long been home to a musical culture that has nurtured several generations of jazz artists. Music historian Dave Oliphant sums matters up concisely in his Handbook of Texas article on jazz in Texas: "At the end of the 1950s, jazz underwent its greatest revolution since the beginnings of the bebop movement some 20 years before," notes Oliphant."In 1958, Ornette Coleman of Fort Worth initiated what he labeled . Change of the Century and Free Jazz . Many of his protégés were also natives of Fort Worth, [including] tenorist Dewey Redman and drummers Charles Moffett and Ronald Shannon Jackson." Oliphant cites still earlier roots in such Fort Worth artists as drummer Ray McKinley and tenorist Tex Beneke, both of the Glenn Miller Orchestra. Some of the most important names in jazz, representing just about every major style - big-band, bebop, free jazz, you-name-it - have roots right here in Fort Worth. But beyond people in the local jazz community, this history had been completely unknown, and in mortal danger of being lost. At this point, Donna Van Ness' idea of a jazz archive seemed not just interesting; it seemed essential. Thus the Jazz Preservation Project was founded. The Library's Genealogy, Archives & History Unit has become a consistent presence at the Jazz by the Boulevard Festival each September. We have a Jazz History & Archives booth, where we feature exhibits and provide literature about the Jazz Preservation Project. We have also sponsored lectures by such music-history scholars as Dave Oliphant and Michael H. Price, performances and poetry slams. Building an archival collection of this scale can be slow going. While we have several potential donors, the actual file-transfer process can be tedious and time-consuming. But we do have serious commitments, and records are slowly coming in. One of our most rewarding projects has been our oral-history program, Jazz Perspectives. This is a series of interviews we have done in cooperation with the Fort Worth City Cable Channel. Over the last year and a half, we have completed six interviews, including Marjorie Crenshaw of the Fort Worth Jazz Society, big-band era musician Curley Broiles and pianist Johnny Case. We have also collected archival footage featuring Dewey Redman and other local jazz greats from Sarah Walker's African-American documentary series They Showed the Way, which can be seen on the City Cable Channel. And the Jazz Preservation Project has been enhanced by other collections in our archives. For example, the Tarrant County Black Historical and Genealogical Society Collection contains information on the neighborhoods that nurtured the early jazz community in Fort Worth, and on early jazz venues such as the Jim Hotel. The society's records also provide valuable information on the history of I.M. Terrell High School, where many of our local jazz greats were educated. A couple of years ago, we acquired a fascinating collection of manuscripts, pamphlets, flyers and many photographs related to the Rocket Club, a Jacksboro Highway venue that had featured a lively bigband scene during the late 1940s and early 1950s. We are also interested in the urban geography of jazz history in Fort Worth. We want to identify the neighborhoods that nurtured the art form, to identify the places where jazz was most frequently played and celebrated. Jazz is universal in its appeal, embracing varied forms ranging from Western swing, big-band, Dixieland and bebop to the avant-garde work of Ornette Coleman. The deepest roots of jazz can be located in AfricanAmerican sources - an essential part of the cultural life of Fort Worth's African-American communities. It is our hope that the archival collection we are building will help to identify the people and places important to the history of jazz in Fort Worth, and that it will help to continue the growth and development of jazz in the neighborhoods where it traditionally has flourished. FWC Tom Kellam chronicles the city's cultural and economic history as senior librarian and archivist with the Fort Worth Public Library. Contact: tkellam@fortworthlibrary.org 28 Fort Worth Culture / Spring 08 PHOTO BY GLEN E. ELLMAN
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