Amon Carter Museum establishes Gentling Study Center

Scott G. Gentling and Stuart W. Gentling and examples of their work

The Amon Carter Museum of American Art has created a new center dedicated to enhancing two Fort Worth artists’ reputation as top painters in contemporary American Art.

The newly-established Gentling Study Center will have new collections and become a repository for works of notable artists Scott G. Gentling and Stuart W. Gentling.

“Through recent significant gifts, the museum is delighted to more fully engage our audiences with the close study of the Gentlings’ legacy and demonstrate our commitment to overlooked artists,” said the museum’s executive director Andrew J. Walker.

The center will have a dedicated curator who will oversee fellowship, publication, acquisition, and exhibition programs.

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It will be housed in a new Study Room, which will open in September.

An endowed yearly fellowship to support intensive ongoing research and scholarship was also established.

Scholars and the public will have access to monographic resources of the museum’s library, archives and art collections at the Study Room.

Edward P. Bass’s contribution to the museum helped acquire a significant collection of Gentling artworks from their estate and to establish endowments to support the Center’s mission.

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The center, however, is the result of Suzanne Gentling, executor of the Gentling’s estate, who placed the brothers’ personal papers and diaries at the museum to establish an archive.

Recognizing her gift, the Fort Worth Museum of Science and History subsequently transffered its historical collection of paintings, drawings, and study material related to the Gentlings’ most famous project, Of Birds and Texas, to the Amon Carter Museum.

“This consolidation of Gentling materials at the Carter marks a significant day for Fort Worth,” said Van Romans, President of Fort Worth Museum of Science and History, “And [it] is the embodiment of the Cultural District’s unique collaborative spirit that enhances our community with extraordinary national treasures.”

The Gentling brothers, born in 1942, moved to Fort Worth from Minnesota at the age of five.

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The two developed and evovled an unique painting style rooted in naturalism and romantic realism.

In the late 1990s, the brothers were commissioned to design the murals in Bass Performance Hall in downtown Fort Worth.

The Gentlings’ forty original bird paintings and associated preparatory material from the portfolio Of Birds and Texas will be on view at the Amon Carter Museum in two exhibitions in September and December 2019.

A comprehensive career retrospective on the Gentlings is planned for mid-2021.

An accompanying publication, the first major monograph on the artists, will engage eminent scholars to explore the brothers’ place within the larger national art canon.

“I don’t know what Stuart and Scott are working on these days, wherever they are, but I’m certain that they’re as honored and excited as I am that their archive has found its new home here at the Amon Carter Museum in their beloved Fort Worth,” Suzanne Gentling said, “and, that their work will serve as a genesis for the preservation and research of other artists’ archives in the future.”

Individuals with Gentling work in their private collections are encouraged to contact Gentling Curator Jonathan Frembling or Gentling Curatorial Assistant Janelle Montgomery via email at Gentling@cartermuseum.org to have their objects documented in the artists’ raisonné.