JUNKER, Patricia 1952-

PERSONAL: Born August 16, 1952, in OH. Education: University of Toledo, B.A. (magna cum laude), 1974; University of Michigan, M.A., 1980.

ADDRESSES: Office—Amon Carter Museum, 3501 Camp Bowie Blvd., Fort Worth, TX 76107-2695. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER: Toledo Museum of Art, Toledo, OH, fellow, 1976-77; Smith College, Northampton, MA, intern at art museum, 1978-80, curatorial assistant, 1980-82; University of Rochester, Rochester, NY, curator of American art and chief curator at Memorial Art Gallery, 1982-90; University of Wisconsin—Madison, curator of collections at Elvehjem Museum of Art, 1990-92; Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, M. H. de Young Museum, San Francisco, CA, assistant curator of American paintings, 1992-94, acting head of American art department, 1994-96, associate curator of American art, 1996-99; Amon Carter Museum, Fort Worth, TX, curator of paintings and sculpture, 1999—.

John Steuart Curry Foundation, member of board of directors, 1992-96; American Decorative Arts Forum, member of board of directors, 1998—.

MEMBER: Midwest Art History Association (member of board of directors, 1992), Upper Midwest Conservation Association (member of board of directors, 1992).

AWARDS, HONORS: National Endowment for the Arts fellowship, 1976-77, internship, 1978-80; scholar of Association of Art Museum Directors at Attingham Summer School, England, 1982; Henry Allen Moe Prize, New York State Historical Association, 1991, for Winslow Homer in the 1890s; grant from Henry Luce Foundation.

WRITINGS:

Promoted to Glory: The Apotheosis of George Washington, Museum of Art, Smith College (Northampton, MA), 1980.

The Course of Empire: The Erie Canal and the New York Landscape, 1825-1875, University of Washington Press (Seattle, WA), 1984.

North Country Landscape: Gibson Gallery at the Brainerd Arts Complex, Gallery (Potsdam, NY), 1986.

Winslow Homer in the 1890s: Prout's Neck Observed, Hudson Hills Press (New York, NY), 1990.

(Contributor) Facing Eden: One Hundred Years of Landscape Art in the San Francisco Bay Area, 1895-1995, University of California Press (Berkeley, CA), 1995.

John Steuart Curry: Inventing the Middle West, Hudson Hills Press (New York, NY), 1998.

An American Collection: Works from the Amon Carter Museum, Hudson Hills Press (New York, NY), 2001.

Winslow Homer, Artist and Angler, Amon Carter Museum (Forth Worth, TX) and Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco (San Francisco, CA), 2002.

Coauthor of The Rockefeller Collection of American Art at the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, Abrams (New York, NY). Author of exhibition catalogs. Contributor to periodicals, including Triptych, Magazine Antiques, and Porticus.

SIDELIGHTS: A long-time museum curator with special expertise in nineteenth-century American art, Patricia Junker has organized numerous art exhibitions and authored many exhibition catalogs and articles for prominent magazines. She has also received prestigious research grants from the Henry Luce Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. In 1990 Junker joined the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, M. H. de Young Museum, and became associate curator of American Art. In 1999 she was appointed curator of paintings and sculpture at the Amon Carter Museum in Fort Worth, Texas.

In 1998 Junker served as curator of the exhibit "John Steuart Curry: Inventing the Middle West" at the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco. Junker also was lead author of the exhibit's catalog. Curry was the least known of America's Regionalist triumvirate, which included the artists Thomas Hart Benton and Grant Wood. Curry focused much of his work on rural Kansas, illustrating life on the farm, tornadoes, baptisms, and other aspects of native life.

In an interview on the PBS nightly news show The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, Junker was asked why there had been a resurgence of interest in Curry, who fell into disfavor among arts patrons after he died in 1946 and after abstract expressionism became popular in the American art world. Junker noted that Curry's art depicted both intellectual and cultural issues of the times. "We found that this was an important transforming moment, the period of the thirties and forties." Junker went on to note, "The struggle of man against nature . . . was one of the primary motivations of his art, reminding us that we're vulnerable and that we're always at the mercy of forces greater than human forces."

In 2002 Junker organized a major loan exhibition titled "Winslow Homer: The Art of Fishing." Junker had mounted an earlier 1991 exhibition of Homer's work called "The 1890s: Prout's Neck Observed" and won the 1991 Henry Allen Moe Prize for the outstanding exhibit art catalog of the year. The new exhibit focused on Homer's watercolors of fish and fishing, which was one of the artist's favorite pastimes. In the catalog of the exhibition, titled Winslow Homer, Artist and Angler, Junker points to Homer's two Florida black bass paintings as among his most elegant works. "With them he distilled from his Florida angling experience a singularly powerful expression of the joy and miracle of life, a profound sense of death, and the wonder and mystery of nature," wrote Junker.

Reviewing the catalog in London's Spectator, John McEwen noted, "This handsome book should be given to all those non-Waltonians who say 'I don't fish because I haven't got the patience,' because it shows that fishing is ultimately about contemplation." McEwen went on to point out that Junker wrote two of the book's seven essays and is "herself a keen angler, and pads out its limited subject with a beginner's guide to fishing lore and brief history of American nineteenth-century fishing art." In a review of the exhibit and catalogue, a contributor to Library Journal noted that "no other work has examined his lifelong ardor for the sport in such detail and with such an eye toward clarifying both Homer's creations and the object of his passion."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

BOOKS

Junker, Patricia, Winslow Homer, Artist and Angler, Amon Carter Museum (Forth Worth, TX) and Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco (San Francisco, CA), 2002.

PERIODICALS

Booklist, April 1, 1998, Gilbert Taylor, review of John Steuart Curry: Inventing the Middle West, p. 1292.

Library Journal, May 15, 1998, Russell T. Clement, review of John Steuart Curry, p. 82; February 15, 2003, review of Winslow Homer, Artist and Angler, p. 133.

Spectator (London, England), March 1, 2003, John McEwen, review of Winslow Homer, Artist and Angler, p. 55.

ONLINE

Carter Museum,http://www.cartermuseum.org/ (September 27, 1999), "Amon Carter Museum Appoints Patricia Junker As New Curator of Paintings and Sculpture."

Online NewsHour,http://www.pbs.org/newshour/ (August 13, 1998), "Curry's Kansas."

Western Sport Shop,http://www.westernsportshop.com/ (December 31, 2002), "Winslow Homer Casts a Spell."*