Museum History

A self-made man, Amon G. Carter (1879–1955) became a legendary figure in Texas history and Fort Worth’s leading citizen and champion. His interest in the art of Frederic Remington (1861–1909) and Charles M. Russell (1864–1926) developed through his friendship with humorist Will Rogers (1879–1935). Mr. Carter’s will provided for the establishment of a museum in Fort Worth, free and open to the public, devoted to American art. “As a youth, I was denied the advantages which go with the possession of money,” he stated in the will. “I am endeavoring to give to those who have not had such advantages, but who aspire to the higher and finer attributes of life, those opportunities which were denied to me.” Today, the museum he did not live to see has evolved into one of the nation’s great museums of American art.

Designed by Philip Johnson (1906–2005), the Amon Carter Museum of American Art opened to the public in January 1961. “Johnson’s museum is extremely elegant,” one critic reported in Harper’s Magazine that May. From the beginning, the museum was intended to be a vibrant institution; not only would it house Mr. Carter’s collection of works by Remington and Russell, it would expand to encompass a broader range of American art. The museum’s first director, Mitchell A. Wilder (1913—1979), believed that the history of American art could be interpreted as the history of artists working on “successive frontiers.” As a result, the collection grew in fascinating ways. Wilder and the museum’s trustees decided at the outset that, rather than endeavoring to assemble a comprehensive collection of American art, they would aim for quality over quantity. The museum began to acquire important works of art in various media–paintings, sculpture, works on paper, photographs, and books–by many noted artists working in various styles and depicting a range of subjects and forms. In the 1970s, Wilder commissioned photographer Richard Avedon (1923–2004) to create what would become the groundbreaking body of work In the American West.

Following Wilder’s death in 1979, Jan Keene Muhlert was named director. During her tenure, the museum aggressively continued to add major works to its collection, including William Merritt Chase’s Idle Hours (ca. 1894), Childe Hassam’s Flags on the Waldorf (1916), and Georgia O’Keeffe’s Red Cannas (1927).

Muhlert was succeeded in 1995 by Dr. Rick Stewart, who for a decade oversaw an ever expanding collection and pioneered programs in the field of American studies. It was under Stewart’s supervision as well that on the occasion of its fortieth anniversary the Amon Carter underwent a major expansion. Again designed by Johnson–making the building as a whole a singular example of his work–the museum now has gallery space to accommodate the full breadth of its permanent collection. With its expansive galleries for traveling exhibitions, there are today some 600 works of art on view at any given time. A 160-seat auditorium is available for programs, and the library of 50,000 volumes is the only research facility between the two coasts to house the 7,500 microform reels of the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution. The museum also houses one of the preeminent collections of American photography, and the expansion resulted in climate-controlled vaults (for both cool and cold storage) and a state-of-the-art conservation center, made possible in part by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

In the summer of 2006, Stewart stepped down and Dr. Ron Tyler became the Carter’s fourth director. Tyler actually rejoined the Carter, for this is where he began his museum career in 1969 before leaving seventeen years later to join the faculty at the University of Texas in Austin. Tyler retired in 2011 and was succeeded in April of that year by Dr. Andrew J. Walker, former assistant director for curatorial affairs and curator of American art at the Saint Louis Art Museum.