Electra Carlin

Electra Carlin (September 28, 1912 – February 19, 2000) was an American art dealer and gallery owner in Fort Worth, Texas. She operated Fort Worth's longest-running private art gallery, which was also the first in the area founded and operated by women. Electra Anne Marshall was born September 28, 1912, to Bert Marshall (ca. 1869-1924) and Frances E. "Fannie" Peers Marshall (1872-1955). Bert was a railroad conductor and, later, car service superintendent, from Illinois or Missouri; Fannie was a homemaker from Dallas. Born and raised in Fort Worth, she attended art exhibitions at Fort Worth Public Library as a child, but never studied art. She majored in journalism in college, attending the University of Oklahoma, Beaver College in Pennsylvania, and Washington University in St. Louis. There she met her husband, Howard Lee "H. Lee" Carlin, a native of Racine, Missouri, who served in the Navy Reserve during World War II. The Carlins lived in Washington, D.C., and Roanoke, Virginia, while H. Lee worked at the Bureau of Engraving and Printing and the National Production Authority of the Department of Commerce. In 1952, the couple relocated to Dallas, where H. Lee was killed in an accident only three weeks after their move, at the age of 41, and interred at Greenwood Cemetery. After her husband's death, Electra returned to Fort Worth to live near her mother. She volunteered at The Reeder School, a noted children's theater school run by Fort Worth Circle artists Dickson and Flora Reeder, until its closure in 1958. She kept books for the nearby Gallery of Wonderful Things, on Byers Avenue in Fort Worth's west side, until 1959, when owner Terese Law Hershey moved to Houston and left Carlin the gallery. Carlin continued exhibiting art at the gallery as well as Ridglea Country Club, showing works by Fort Worth Circle-affiliated artists like Bill Bomar, Cynthia Brants, Blanche McVeigh, Edward Dickson Reeder, and Bror Alexander Utter. She renovated an old laundromat on 7th Street and moved the gallery there in 1959.