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Gilded Age Exhibition to Open at the Carter in 2027
In June 2027, the Amon Carter Museum of American Art (the Carter) will premiere
Featuring over 50 paintings and preparatory studies spanning from the 1870s through the 1920s, the monographic presentation
Gilded Angst underscores the realism of Beaux’s portraits, which offer a candid view of an elite class at its zenith yet facing accelerating decline in the early twentieth century. Through her use of free brushwork and sensitive attention to the relationships between figures, Beaux’s portraits capture the precariousness of Gilded Age society and the anxieties and dark complexities that accompanied its eventual downfall. A highlight of the exhibition is a recent acquisition to the Carter’s collection, Beaux’s Mrs. John Frederick Lewis and Her Son, John Frederick Lewis, Jr. (1908), which exemplifies Beaux’s multilayered portraiture, with a superficial lightness that gives way to an emotional and psychological realism marked by disconnection, aloofness, angst, and boredom.
Cecilia Beaux (American, 1855-1942), Man with the Cat (Henry Sturgis Drinker), 1898, oil on canvas, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Bequest of Henry Ward Ranger through the National Academy of Design, 1952.10.1
“This new exhibition provides a fresh look at the Gilded Age, exploring its hidden complexities through the unique and masterful portraits of Cecilia Beaux,” said Scott Wilcox, Interim Director of the Carter. “We are thrilled to introduce her work to contemporary audiences, finally highlighting an artist whose important contributions have often been overlooked.”
The obscurity of Beaux’s legacy that followed boundary-breaking popularity during her lifetime stems, in part, from the artist’s own personal contradictions, including the paradoxical identities of her upper-class, conservative heritage, and her more bohemian relationship
“Gilded Angst highlights the ways in which Beaux’s interwoven
Cecilia Beaux (1855–1942), Ernesta (Child with Nurse), 1894, oil on canvas, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Maria DeWitt Jesup Fund, 1965, 65.49, © The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Gilded Angst examines Beaux’s portraiture from early family portraits to later commissions that established her as the portraitist of choice for the Gilded Age elite. In addition to society portraits, the exhibition highlights Beaux’s depiction of pioneering professional women, including portraits of vanguard social reformers and educators. It also underscores the complex interiority unique to Beaux’s portraits through her sensitive depiction of the relationship between mothers and children during the Gilded Age, one often mediated by the labor of domestic workers in the upper classes. Adding further dimensionality to the exhibition is an immersive installation by contemporary artist Darren Waterston, commissioned by the Carter and the Gardner, which reimagines the domestic interiors of Beaux’s portraits. The installation highlights the psychological tension underlying Beaux’s portraits, allowing visitors to experience the simultaneous splendor and angst of the Gilded Age.
The Carter and the Gardner will co-publish an illustrated catalogue, to be distributed by Yale University Press, with full-color reproductions and previously unpublished archival materials. With scholarly essays by leading experts in the area, as well as the first technical study of Beaux’s work, the publication provides a landmark contribution to the study of American women artists and portraiture. It includes contributions by exhibition curators Michaela Haffner (the Carter) and Diana Seave Greenwald (the Gardner) as well as R. Tripp Evans, Professor of the History of Art, Wheaton College; Lea Stephenson, Curator of Historical American Art at Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts; Kedra Kearis, Associate Curator of Art and Visual Culture, Winterthur Museum, Garden & Library; Saffie Patel, Richard I. Shader Fellow in Painting Conservation, Harvard Art Museums; Sylvia Yount, Lawrence A. Fleischman Curator in Charge at the Metropolitan Museum of Art; and artists Darren Waterston and J
Cecilia Beaux: Gilded Angst is co-organized by the Amon Carter Museum of American Art and the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in collaboration with the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts.
The exhibition will travel to the Gardner from October 21, 2027, through January 23, 2028, and to the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, Philadelphia in 2028.
Cecilia Beaux (1855–1942), Twilight Confidences, 1888, oil on canvas, Georgia Museum of Art, University of Georgia; Museum purchase with funds provided by the William Underwood Eiland Endowment for Acquisitions made possible by M. Smith Griffith and the W. Newton Morris Charitable Foundation, 2018.117
