Museums are a relatively recent development in Texas.
Perhaps the first museum was nothing more than the exhibition in a local hotel room of an itinerant limner's portrait samples, such as Thomas Jefferson Wright qv presented in Houston in 1837. Several buildings were constructed in Fair Park qv in Dallas, which was the official headquarters for the celebration, and museums were also built in El Paso, Houston, Austin, Huntsville, and other cities. The national bicentennial in 1976 inspired even more effort, as local historical societies throughout Texas established museums in old jails, courthouses, railroad depots, and other historic buildings, and museums already in existence added to their space and installed new exhibitions. Perhaps the Kimbell Art Museum and the Amon Carter Museum qqv in Fort Worth are the most obvious examples, but the Marion Koogler McNay Art Museum in San Antonio, the Stark Museum of Art in Orange, Bayou Bend and the Menil Collection in Houston, and the Sid Richardson Collection of Western Art qqv in Fort Worth also owe their existence to the inspiration of a single collector or family. The Amon Carter Museum followed in 1961, presenting the unexcelled collection of paintings and sculpture by Frederic Remington and Charles M. Russell that Amon G. Carter, Sr.