Visitors are invited to enjoy an afternoon of lively discussion and light refreshments at this month's OJAC Focus Lecture. 

Katie Robinson Edwards is the curator of the Umlauf Sculpture Garden and Museum in Austin and author of Midcentury Modern Art in Texas. She will be at the OJAC to share insights about midcentury Texas art, specifically highlighting the artists of The Fort Worth Circle. 

The OJAC Focus Lecture Series is a quarterly offering of presentations by artists, speakers and historians on a variety of social, cultural and historical topics ranging from the visual arts to community and Texas History.

This lecture will be in the Stasney Center for Education. This event is free and open to the public.

Did you know...?

The OJAC is home to the largest public collection of works by artists of the Fort Worth Circle. 

"The Fort Worth Circle was a group of artists active during the 1940s and early 1950s who shared ideas and supported and encouraged one another while developing their own individual aesthetics. Creating a 'school' - as they were originally referred - was not their intent, as there was no known purposefully shared artistic ideology, philosophy, dogma or style. What they did have in common was a kindred spirit influenced by European modernism and the rejection of the prevalent and popular Texas Regionalism and 'bluebonnet school.' 

Artists of the Fort Worth Circle include: William (Bill) Bomar, Cynthia Brants, Lia Cuilty, Kelly Fearing, George Grammar, Veronica Helfensteller, Marjorie Johnson Lee, Dickson Reeder, Flora Blanc Reeder, Sara Shannon and Bror Utter. Other artists often associated with the Circle because of their influence as teachers and role models were Sallie Gillespie, Blanche McVeigh, and Evaline Sellors. 

By the early 1950s, many of the Fort Worth Circle artists went on to become teachers and university faculty around the state, serving as mentors to the next generation of Texas artists." 

Excerpt from OJAC Collection Catalogue Essay The Fort Worth Circle by Patrick Kelly.