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.

[3] Additions to Amon G. Carter's original holdings by museum curators have resulted in a collection that contains multiple examples of Remington's and Russell's best work at every stage of their respective careers.

Working from his New York studio except when traveling, Remington produced colorful and masculine images of life in the Old West that shaped public perceptions of the American frontier experience for an eastern audience eager for information.

[7]Though neither artist had lived on the frontier at the height of America's westward expansion, their drawings, paintings, and sculptures were infused with the action and convincing realism of direct observation.

[12] 5) Charles M. Russell, Meat for Wild Men (1924) -- a bronze sculpture that evokes the "grand turmoil" resulting as a band of mounted hunters descends upon a herd of grazing buffalo.

[15] Other Hudson River School artists represented in the collection by major oil paintings are Robert Seldon Duncanson (1821–1872), David Johnson (1827–1908), and Worthington Whittredge (1820–1910).

Moran, famous for his paintings of the Yellowstone region of Wyoming, is represented in the Carter collection by his 1874 oil Cliffs of Green River (see picture gallery below).

[18] Crossing the Pasture (1871–72) by Winslow Homer (acquired 1976) combines the artist's skills as a figure painter with his gift for storytelling to create a charming image of rural New York life.

The Potter (1889) by George de Forest Brush (1855–1941) is another example in the Carter collection of an artist's exacting and nuanced method of depicting an indigenous American sitter.

Notable genre paintings by Conrad Wise Chapman (1842–1910), Francis William Edmonds (1806–1863), Thomas Hovenden (1840–1895), and Eastman Johnson (1824–1906) are also housed in the Carter collection.

Portraitist John Singer Sargent (1856–1925) is represented in the museum's collection by formal portraits of two American subjects, Alice Vanderbilt Shepard (1888), and Edwin Booth (1890; see picture gallery below).

Alexander Phimister Proctor (1860–1950) and Anna Hyatt Huntington (1876–1973) are represented by bronzes created in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries respectively.

The experimentation of early twentieth-century artists with nature-based abstraction and direct carving techniques from natural materials is seen in works by John Flannagan (1895–1942), Robert Laurent (1890–1970), and Elie Nadelman (1882–1946).

Charles Demuth's Chimney and Water Tower (1931), painted in the artist's hometown of Lancaster, Pennsylvania, depicts a local linoleum factory as a grid of austere, monumental forms and passages of steel gray, blue, and deep red.

American modernists represented in the Carter collection also include Josef Albers (1888–1976), Will Barnet (1911–2012), Oscar Bluemner (1867–1938), Morton Schamberg (1881–1918), Ben Shahn (1898–1969), Charles Sheeler (1883–1965), Joseph Stella (1877–1946), and others (see picture gallery below).

The personal archives of photographers Carlotta Corpron (1901–1988), Nell Dorr (1893–1988), Laura Gilpin (1891–1979), Eliot Porter (1901–1990), Erwin E. Smith (1886–1947), and Karl Struss (1886–1981) are prominent collection resources.

The Carter's collection of nineteenth-century landscape photographs includes images by John K. Hillers (1843–1925), William Henry Jackson (1843–1942), Timothy H. O'Sullivan (1840–1882), Andrew J. Russell (1830–1902), and Carleton E. Watkins (1829–1916).

The Carter's nineteenth-century print collection also includes a copy of the landmark Hudson River Portfolio (1821–25) based on the work of painter William Guy Wall (1792–after 1864) and engraver John Hill (1770–1850); original copper plate etchings of Native Americans as depicted in field studies by Karl Bodmer (1809–1893); a complete set of planographic prints from George Catlin's North American Indian Portfolio (1844); and ornithological prints from John James Audubon's landmark book The Birds of America (published 1827–38).Examples of work in the collection by other noted expeditionary artists include rare nineteenth-century field studies by Edward Everett (1818–1903), Richard H. Kern (1821–1853), John H. B. Latrobe (1803–1891), Alfred Jacob Miller (1810–1874), and Peter Rindisbacher (1806–1834); nineteenth-century views of the American West by John Mix Stanley (1814–1872) and Henry Warre (1819–1898); and early views of San Francisco by Thomas A. Ayres (1816–1858).

[27] These biographical files offer researchers a wealth of newspaper clippings, small exhibition catalogs, resumes, journal and periodical articles, reproductions, event invitations and announcements, portfolios, bibliographies, and similar material from which to draw.

[42] In their early discussions, Wilder and the board decided that the museum's programs and permanent collection should reflect many aspects of American culture, both historic and contemporary.

The museum published Paper Talk: The Illustrated Letters of Charles M. Russell in 1962, the first of many books on the art of the American West to originate from the Amon Carter.

Paintings by George de Forest Brush (1855–1941) and Charles Sheeler (1883–1965), as well as a complete, 20-volume set of Edward Sheriff Curtis' The North American Indian (1907–1930), were added to the museum's permanent collection during Tyler's administration.

Under Walker's leadership, the Carter has hosted major exhibitions of work by George Caleb Bingham (1811–1879), Will Barnet (1911–2012), and the circle of New York modernists led by artist John Graham (1886–1961).

Architect Philip C. Johnson (1906–2005) maintained a forty-year association with the Amon Carter Museum of American Art as the designer of the institution's original building and two major expansions.

[54] The main entrance lead directly into a two-story hall adorned with the same type of shellstone used on the exterior, teak wall coverings, and a floor of pink and gray granite.

[57] In 1964, three years after the museum first opened, a 14,250-square-foot addition was completed on the west side of the original building to provide room for offices, a bookstore, a research library, and an art-storage vault.

[35] Joseph R. Pelich (1894–1968) of Fort Worth, an associate architect of the original building, carried out the work after Philip Johnson expressed little interest in taking on the project.

[57] The expansion's most arresting feature is a centrally located atrium, rising fifty-five feet above the floor and topped by a curved roof with side windows, referred to as the Lantern.

The Texas sculptor James Surls's Seven and Seven Flower and Justin Favela's Puente Nuevo were among the first large scale artworks displayed in the downstairs hallway connecting the 1961 building with the 2001 expansion as part of the redesign.

"[61] In addition to the redesigned galleries, the photography cold storage vaults were renovated to accommodate the growing and collection and to provide updated preservation technologies.