More about Amon Carter Museum of American Art
Works at Amon Carter Museum of American Art
Sr. Contributor
The only thing Amon Carter loved more than American art was the city of Fort Worth.
Amon G. Carter, Sr. had one of those good ol' fashioned American success stories. He was born into nothin' but dirt farmin' and strife. Paid his own way through school by working odd jobs. Things like selling chicken sandwiches at the train station in a tobacco spittin' town called Bowie, taking care of the doctor's horse 'n buggy, and milking cows. That's right, tuition depended on how well he could squeeze teats.
Must've been something worth learning among all those rail yard hobos and livestock manure. Carter moved from Texas to San Francisco as a successful salesman and advertiser. Job offers along the best coast landed in his lap, but he only had the Lone Star on his mind. He was back in the lower plains a few years later selling ads for a start-up newspaper in Fort Worth. He eventually ascended to the paper's top post, calling shots and setting his sights on Dallas. Under his leadership, the Fort Worth newspaper consolidated with a few of the other smaller newspapers with the goal of running Dallas out of west Texas and officially establishing Fort Worth as the area's cultural heart. From there, Carter got involved in the radio business, helped found a university in central Texas, invested in the air travel industry, and boosted for national politics. Private time was split between personally reporting from Britain during World War II, trading hats with his friends and colleagues, and art collecting.
Shortly before being called to the big managerial desk in the sky, Carter got the idea for a museum. The town readily gave up some prime real estate for the idea, seeded by Carter's own collection of primo American art. As the will put it, the museum would "stimulate the artistic imagination among young people residing" in Fort Worth. Amen, brother Carter.
Featured Content
Here is what Wikipedia says about Amon Carter Museum of American Art
The Amon Carter Museum of American Art (the Carter) is located in Fort Worth, Texas, in the city's cultural district. The museum's permanent collection features paintings, photography, sculpture, and works on paper by leading artists working in the United States and its North American territories in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The greatest concentration of works falls into the period from the 1820s through the 1940s. Photographs, prints, and other works on paper produced up to the present day are also an area of strength in the museum's holdings.
The collection was built on portrayals of the Old West by Frederic Remington and Charles M. Russell, artworks depicting nineteenth-century expansionism and settlement of the North American continent, and masterworks that are emblematic of major turning points in American art history. The "full spectrum" of American photography is documented by 45,000 exhibition-quality prints, dating from the earliest years of the medium to the present. A rotating selection of works from the permanent collection is on view year-round during regular museum hours, and several thousand of these works can be studied online using the Collection tab on the Carter's official website. Museum admission for all exhibits, including special exhibits, is free.
The Amon Carter Museum of American Art opened in 1961 as the Amon Carter Museum of Western Art. The museum's original collection of more than 300 works of art by Frederic Remington and Charles M. Russell was assembled by Fort Worth newspaper publisher and philanthropist Amon G. Carter Sr. (1879–1955). Carter spent the last ten years of his life laying the legal, financial, and philosophical groundwork for the museum's creation.
Check out the full Wikipedia article about Amon Carter Museum of American Art
