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Reflections of the Ft. Worth cultural scene

"As a youth, I was denied the advantages which go with the possession of money," Amon G. Carter stated in his 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."

Carter is synonymous with Ft. Worth culture, having endowed the north Texas city with a heritage that goes well beyond the museum bearing his name or its contents.  The newspaper magnate and philanthropist, who passed away six years before his namesake museum was completed in 1961 with his original collection of  Frederic Remington and Charles M. Russell paintings and sculpture, is an iconic symbol of the smaller and often overlooked little sister to the brash, cosmopolitan Dallas 30 miles to the east.

Carter's defiance and disdain for "The Big D," characterized in the story about how he would always pack a bag lunch when he visited as to not have to leave any his money there, grew out of hard work and civic commitment that left a legacy in this once military outpost, turned eclectic and casual city of three-quarters of a million "where the West begins."  Carter's name adorns the likes of airfields, roadways, football stadiums and lakes in addition to the museum, whose glass-fronted facade is shown here reflecting the city's downtown beyond the rest of the Cultural District.

Commonly defined as an area adjoining the intersections of Camp Bowie Boulevard and University Drive, just to the west and beyond a fork of the Trinity River from the city center's skyscrapers, is home to many necessary stop-offs for tourists and locals alike.  Besides the Amon Carter Museum of American Art -- which has almost tripled in size with three expansion projects over the years and is now home to not only one of the preeminent Western American art collections but a trustee to a photography archive rivaled by few and a total assemblage of 700 works of art on view at any given time, a 160-seat auditorium, and the library of 40,000 volumes with the only research facility between the two coasts to house the 7,500 micro form reels of the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution -- the area houses other landmarks like the Modern Art Museum of Ft. Worth, The Kimball Art Museum, Casa Manana, Will Rogers Memorial Center, The Ft. Worth Botanical Gardens, Montgomery Ward Plaza, and the Ft. Worth Museum of Science and History, and the National Cowgirl Museum and Hall of Fame, all nestled within mixed-use residential, boutique retail and entertainment venues.

It is the Carter museum that is, however, the talisman of the shift from frontier Cowtown to the present.  Designed by Philip Johnson, the museum faces back to the east and its two-story front wall of glass windows and bronze mullions is sheltered by an arched portico constructed of Texas shellstone. Johnson wrote that this curtain wall separated “the art from the city, the cool from the warm, the peaceful from the active, the still from the windy.”   The museum's steps overlook a rectangular garden with modern oversized sculptures which offer contrast to interior pieces dating back to early 19th century pastoral American landscapes.  Intimate and expansive galleries house permanent collections as well as traveling exhibitions.

A visit to the Carter museum offers a delightfully refreshing smorgasbord of American culture with the relaxed sophistication that reflects the essence of this community so loved by the man himself.

Below is a overview of some of the landmarks and attractions of Ft. Worth's Cultural District:

• The Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, founded in 1892, is the oldest art museum in Texas. Its permanent collection consists of some 2,600 works of post-war art. In 2002, the museum moved into a new home designed by Japanese architect Tadao Ando.
• The Kimbell Art Museum houses works from antiquity to the 20th century. Artists represented in its holdings include Caravaggio, Fra Angelico, Picasso, Vigée-Lebrun, Matisse, Cézanne, El Greco, and Rembrandt. The museum's home was designed by American architect Louis Kahn.
• The Amon Carter Museum focuses on 19th and 20th century American artists. It houses an extensive collection of works by Western artists Frederic Remington and Charles M. Russell, as well as an impressive collection of 30,000 exhibition-quality photographs. It also includes works by Alexander Calder, Thomas Cole, Stuart Davis, Thomas Eakins, Winslow Homer, Georgia O'Keeffe, John Singer Sargent, and Alfred Stieglitz. American architect Philip Johnson designed the museum's home, including its expansion.
• The National Cowgirl Museum and Hall of Fame is the only museum in the world that is solely dedicated to honoring women of the American West who have demonstrated extraordinary courage and pioneer spirit in their trail blazing efforts.
• The Fort Worth Museum of Science and History - One of the largest Science and History Museums in the Southwest. It includes the Noble Planetarium and the Omni Theater.
• Will Rogers Memorial Center - a multi-purpose entertainment complex and world-class equestrian center housed under 45 acres (180,000 m²) of roof spread over 85 acres (340,000 m²) in the heart of the Fort Worth Cultural District. Each year approximately 800,000 people attend the three week event known as the Southwestern Exposition and Livestock Show, formerly called the Fort Worth Stock Show & Rodeo.
• Casa Mañana - The nation's first theater designed for musicals "in the round". A controversial renovation completed in 2003 turned the once unique "House of Tomorrow" into a traditional theater and abandoned the round design. The building's unique silver dome remains.
• Museum Place is an 11-acre (45,000 m²), mixed-use development in construction that includes ground level retail, office space, and residential space. The main buildings in this development will be an eight-story brick and glass low rise, a modernized flatiron style building and a new post office that will feature damaged metal from the 2000 tornado as an art display.
• 7th Street is the main street for the cultural district, since it will feature the Museum Place development, the existing residential So7 and Montgomery Plaza, West 7th (another mixed-use development which will feature office, residential, retail, hotel, and a movie theater), and there are even talks of a streetcar route in the near future.

The Amon Carter Museum of American Art 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.
The Amon G. Carter, Jr., Exhibits Hall is located near the Carter Museum.