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Glass Gazing at the Amon Carter A Venetian Obsession Spun Around the Magic of Murano O ccasionally the museum world will pull a proverbial rabbit out of the magician's hat. Such is the case this season with the Amon Carter Museum of American Art's "Sargent, Whistler, and Venetian Glass: American Artists and the Magic of Murano." This unexpected blockbuster — traveling to Fort Worth and organized by the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, D.C. — is actually three exhibitions spun into one show. And, what a show. It's seamlessly united by dual, overarching themes of late- 19th- and early-20th-century American painters on the grand tour basking in the glories of Venice and the isle of Murano, where between 1860 and 1915, a golden revival in the historic tradition of glass making arose. More than tourist souvenirs, these sumptuous Murano marvels drew moneyed American patrons, who in turn discovered the inventiveness of Venice's decorative- arts industries, embracing lacemaking, mosaics, jewelry, and, above all, illustrious glass. The famed Murano glass vessels and their glassmakers in turn became subjects, appearing in the canvases of a coterie of American painters who made the pilgrimage to Venice, most notably John Singer Sargent and James McNeill Whistler, who are among the artists most identified with this enchanting place. At the Carter, this narrative of artists and artisans is told via 140 works: oil paintings, watercolors, and etchings presented alongside dazzling objects. Besides the titular artists who give this exhibition its name, museum- goers will encounter major paintings by a pantheon of the period's greats — William Merritt Chase, Thomas Moran, Maxfield Parrish, Maurice Prendergast, Frank Duveneck, and Francis Hopkinson Smith By Catherine D. Anspon. Portraits Tony Krash. "For every strand I pull, I take 37 steps. Each time I get back to the beginning, another ball of glass is ready to pull. There is a very cyclical, very Zen kind of state that you immerse yourself in." — Justin Ginsberg (Continued) 62