Amon Carter Museum’s season highlights Texas artists, new acquisitions

The Amon Carter Museum of American Art’s 2025-26 exhibition schedule features some familiar Texas artists and collectors, highlights some new acquisitions questioning the ethics of photographs and includes a rare exhibit focused on the experience of Asian American migrants in the Western United States.

Whether the public needs another exhibit dedicated to Scott and Stuart Gentling, the museum is exhibiting one regardless with “Classically Trained: The Gentlings and Music,” the second exhibition dedicated to the late brothers who were darlings of the city’s west side. This show, which runs March 15 through July 13, looks at their fascination with the Age of Enlightenment (1685–1815). The 20 pieces on display include portraits of Beethoven and Mozart, 18th century fashion and original music scores by Scott. For what it’s worth, the brothers’ strengths were their broad array of interests (Aztec Mesoamerica, birds and portraiture) and frequently resulted in charming surprises.

One of the biggest gets by the museum in recent years were 51 photographs by the incredible photographer Robert Bergman. “Fortune of the Spirit | Robert Bergman,” running May 18-Aug. 10, includes 65 of his famed up-close portraits of people on the streets with rich colors and austere stares that lack any description. The artist is quietly making a comeback on the national scene, and deserved for the storyteller, whose color portraits were described as “a master template of the singularity, the community, and the unextinguishable sacredness of the human race” by Nobel Prize winning author Toni Morrison. Photography is a contentious medium, and a street photographer could be easily labeled as exploitative. He contends he’s photographed billionaires and the impoverished. If we go down that route, he forces us to ask how we see others and address, perhaps, our biases too.

Museum exhibits focused on Asian American artists are a rarity in the area. The Kimbell Art Museum boasts a small collection of early Asian art. But contemporary Asian American artists are primarily seen at the Crow Collection of Asian Art in Dallas and Dallas Museum of Art. So “East of the Pacific: Making Histories of Asian American Art,” running May 18 through Nov. 30 is welcome to this side of Interstate 30. Organized by the Cantor Arts Center at Stanford University, which holds a substantial collection of Asian American art, “East of the Pacific” follows the impact of migration across the Pacific Ocean from the mid-19th century to the present. The 32 artists were mostly engaged within the Bay Area but still a relevant show in a state where migrants too contributed to the art scene, even from Japanese internment camps established following the bombing of Pearl Harbor.

Charles Butt may be best known for his H-E-B grocery chain. But thanks to the Carter the public is about to learn the otherwise private San Antonio billionaire has developed an extensive art collection. “American Modernism from the Charles Butt Collection” is a perfect show for the museum founded by a legendary Texan. On view to the public for the first time, the exhibit of 75 artworks spans from the early twentieth century into the 1980s with American modernist brand names, including Romare Bearden, Georgia O’Keeffe, and Andrew Wyeth. It runs Sept. 7-Jan. 25, 2026, and will then tour to venues across the state.