Description
Since opening in 1961 as a showcase for Amon G. Carter Sr.’s collection of Western art by Frederic Remington and Charles M. Russell, the Amon Carter Museum of American Art (ACMAA) has amassed a significant collection of 19 th – and 20 th -century American art, including exemplary holdings of over 45,000 photographs.
The ACMAA is now nearing the completion of an inside and out transformation that will result in reconfigured galleries, new environmental controls in the 1961 building, expanded storage and preservation capacities, and improved accessibility to the museum’s front entrance and plaza. The final phase of this project, for which the ACMAA seeks funding from the Foundation, is the first significant permanent collection reinstallation since 2001. This rethinking of the permanent collection galleries has been necessitated by the prodigious growth of the collection (4,000 works added since 2002) and significant shifts in the practices of presentation and interpretation with which the museum has not kept pace.
The physical alterations of the gallery spaces have included a reclamation of over 4,000 square feet within the existing footprint for permanent collection installation, notably in the front entrance of the museum where an unstable environment had previously prevented the display of work. Additionally, the galleries on the lower level and mezzanine of the 1961 building, initially designed as a series of pocket galleries, have been converted into continuous, fluidly programmable spaces.
The proposed reinstallation will present a fresh set of narratives by shifting from a strictly chronological arrangement to one based in thematic subjects. A comprehensive wayfinding program and a new program of didactics will be put in place throughout the 14,000 square feet of collection galleries. Permanent areas for collection rotations will be established, allowing for the presentation of related works from the museum’s extensive holdings of photography, prints and watercolors, which previously have been featured only in temporary exhibitions. A new information desk area will offer self-guides and other interpretive tools.
The project will be carried out by an expanded curatorial team, including three senior curators and two new assistant curators brought on to support the work. Grant funds would underwrite the preparation and installation of the galleries, and development and implementation of all interpretive materials.
