Current Exhibit – Muscle and Grace

To open The Weider Museum, directors Jan and Terry Todd decided to hang a large photography show highlighting the rich photography collections now housed in the facility. The exhibition has more than 650 photographs, and they are arranged thematically in ten distinct galleries. The Museum is free to the public and is open M-Th from 10-6 and Friday from 10-5. Please call 471-0995 to schedule group visits or write jan@starkcenter.org.

  • Gallery One contains a wide variety of black and white photographs from the 1940s and 1950s depicting the golden era at Muscle Beach. The exhibit was made possible by the donation of Pudgy Stockton’s personal scrapbooks and photographs to the Center.
  • Gallery Two depicts the careers of Joe and Betty Weider and includes dozens of photographs of the weightlifters who inspired Joe in his early days. Of special interest in this gallery are the shots of such famous late-twentieth century bodybuilders as Arnold Schwarzenegger, Franco Columbu, Boyer Coe, Lee Haney, Larry Scott, Chris Dickerson, Sergio Oliva, Frank Zane, and Ronnie Coleman.
  • Gallery Three is dedicated to the pursuit of strength and showcases images related to all the modern strength sports—weightlifting, powerlifting and strongman contests. In addition, the gallery contains a rich collection of nineteenth-century images of circus and vaudeville strongmen and strongwomen.
  • Gallery Four is entitled “Transformation” and explores through photographs the body’s capacity to adapt and change through training. A particular focus of the gallery is a series of photographs of Clarence Bass taken over the passage of 55 years; they demonstrate how effectively Bass has used exercise to resist the physiological effects of aging.
  • Galleries Five, Six and Seven contain more than 150 striking images of a wide variety of sports taken in the 1970s and 1980s by New York photographer Stephen Green-Armytage, a donor to the Center. Green-Armytage was a regular photographer for both Sports Illustrated and Life during this era and many of the shots in these galleries appeared in those publications.
  • Gallery Eight is dedicated to notable Texas golf legends Ben Crenshaw, Tom Kite, and golf guru Harvey Penick, all of whose papers and memorabilia are now at the Center. Also featured is track and field champion Mildred “Babe” Didrickson Zaharias, of Beaumont, Texas, who won two gold medals in the 1932 Olympic Games. She went on to become the greatest woman golfer of her era.
  • Gallery Nine is filled with images of television stars, film stars, and politicians playing golf on the coast of California in places like Pebble Beach. It shows a lighter side of the game rarely seen on TV.
  • Gallery Ten explores Lutcher Stark’s sporting and fitness legacy through a series of images from the Nelda C. and H.J. Lutcher Stark Foundation of Orange, Texas.