Amon Carter Museum

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Amon Carter Museum

Texas shell stone used for the museum's exterior

The Amon Carter Museum is located in Fort Worth, Texas. It was established by the generosity of Amon G. Carter to house his collection of paintings and sculpture by Frederic Remington and Charles M. Russell. When the museum opened in 1961, its first director, Mitchell A. Wilder, sought a broader vision for its collection. Wilder believed that the grand story of American art could be interpreted as the history of many artists at different times working on “successive frontiers” in the great pageant of American history. As a result of this vision, the museum's collections began to expand in many fascinating ways, from the first landscape painters of the 1830s to modern artists of the twentieth century.

Today, the collection includes masterworks by such artists as Alexander Calder, Thomas Cole, Stuart Davis, Thomas Eakins, Winslow Homer, Georgia O'Keeffe, John Singer Sargent, Charles Demuth, Martin Johnson Heade and Alfred Stieglitz. The museum also possesses one of the premier collections of American photography in the nation, comprising more than 30,000 exhibition prints by some 400 photographers. The photography collection also includes the work and archives of several notable American photographers, including Laura Gilpin, Eliot Porter, and Karl Struss. The museum continues to collect American art and produces related programs, publications, and exhibitions. Philip Johnson, the museum’s original architect, designed and completed the building’s most recent expansion in 2001.