Amon Carter Museum
Fort Worth, Tex.
Philip Johnson/Alan Ritchie Architects

Philip Johnson/Alan Ritchie Architects expand a museum that Johnson originally built

© Steve Watson

For more photos click on 'photos & drawings' above. To see the people and products behind this project click on 'people & products.'

By David Dillon

The Amon Carter Museum in Fort Worth opened in 1961 as a small shellstone building with thin tapering arches and a two-story loggia filled with the eponymous donor's collection of cowboy art by Frederick Remington and Charles Russell. Philip Johnson designed the museum at the end of his self-proclaimed Modernist period, when he had grown tired of Mies and the Bauhaus and was casting about for a looser, more expressive "ism."

But the institution soon outgrew the building Johnson had designed for Carter's 400-piece collection. Within a few years, its mission had expanded to Western American art more broadly, and then to American art in general, with special emphasis on photography. Suddenly Johnson's intimate little jewel box, his romantic break with Mies, had become an overstuffed suitcase. His modest additions of 1964 and 1977—including offices, a bookstore, a small garden, a 100-seat theater, and an expanded library—barely dented the space problem.

The latest addition is triangular in plan and three stories high. Faced in brown Arabian granite, it drives into a slope at the rear of the site. Within its 86,000 square feet are education, conservation, office, meeting, and storage facilities, and galleries for the museum's 237,000 paintings, drawings, sculptures, and photographs. A two-story atrium, with granite walls and a beanie-shaped skylight, links new and old.

Johnson was adamant about not tampering with the original building, a personal favorite that marked a turning point in his career. It was conceived as a memorial to Amon Carter, and Johnson often referred to it fondly as a tomb or mausoleum, but said he never imagined it as more than a memorial of mainly local interest.

But to accommodate the current collection, he decided the best solution would be to isolate the 1961 building, the authentic piece, rededicate its first-floor galleries to the works of Remington and Russell, and then create a neutral backdrop to house everything else. Accordingly, he demolished his earlier additions and meticulously restored the teak walls and shellstone ceilings in the original galleries. Even replacing a mesquite tree that had died, the architect refurbished the formal entry plaza with its grand axial view of Fort Worth. Behind this tableau rises the new wing, like a giant scrim for an outdoor pageant.

The addition solved many of the museum's functional problems, particularly the lack of exhibition space for its extraordinary collection of American photography. The images by Edward Curtis, Berenice Abbott, and many others now have a permanent home and a public life.

See the November 2001 issue of Architectural Record for full coverage of this project.

Formal name of Project:
Amon Carter Museum www.cartermuseum.org

Location:
Fort Worth, Tex.

Gross square footage:
107,000 sq. ft.

Total construction cost:
$3.9 million

Owner:
Amon Carter Museum

Architect:
Philip Johnson/Alan Ritchie Architects
375 Park Avenue
New York, NY 10152
Partner-in-charge: Alan Ritchie