"Great museums owe their success to creative and magnanimous people, all working together to collect, preserve, and interpret art."

Ruth Carter Stevenson

The daughter of the Museum’s namesake, Amon G. Carter Sr. (1879–1955), Stevenson was solely responsible for seeing that her father’s wish to establish a museum for the city of Fort Worth was realized. Under her leadership, the Amon Carter Museum of American Art opened to the public in January 1961. Her involvement with the arts reached far beyond the state of Texas: the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Trust for Historic Places, the American Federation of Arts, and the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC. The Carter exists today because of Stevenson, and it is just one of her legacies.