[1] She graduated from the Madeira School and then earned a chemistry degree from Sarah Lawrence College in Yonkers, New York in 1945.
[2][3] Her father specified in his will that a museum specializing in Western American art to be created after his death in 1955,[1] to house his more than 700 art objects depicting the American West, primarily paintings and sculptures by Frederic Remington and Charles Russell.
[2] Stevenson hired architect Philip Johnson to design the building and opened the Amon Carter Museum of Western Art in January 1961, following her father's wishes.
[3] Along with local art enthusiasts Owen Day and Sam Cantey III, Stephenson assembled An Art Exhibition for the President and Mrs. John F. Kennedy which decorated the suite in the Hotel Texas in Fort Worth, Texas, occupied by United States President John F. Kennedy and Jacqueline Kennedy on the night before his assassination on November 22, 1963.
[6] Ruth Carter Stevenson died at her home in Fort Worth, Texas, on January 6, 2013, at the age of 89.