Ron Tyler, Ph.D.

Ron Tyler, Ph.D.

Ron Tyler is the retired Director of the Amon Carter Museum of American Art in Fort Worth, Texas (2006-2011). He is former Professor of History at the University of Texas at Austin (1986-2006) and Director of the Texas State Historical Association and the Center for Studies in Texas History at the University (1986-2004), during which time he was the editor-in-chief of The New Handbook of Texas (6 vols.; 1996 and now online) and the Southwestern Historical Quarterly. Before moving to Austin, he taught at Austin College in Sherman (1967-1969) and served for eighteen years as Curator of History and Director of Public Programs at the Carter. He was born in Temple, Texas, in 1941 and is a graduate of Rogers High School (1960), Temple College (A.A., 1962), Abilene Christian College (B.S., 1964) and Texas Christian University (M.A., 1966; Ph.D. 1968). He married Paula Eyrich in 1974.

He has published a number of works in the areas of American, Western American, Texas, and Mexican art and history. His Native Americans: The Prints of Karl Bodmer, George Catlin, and McKenney & Hall is in press with Taschen publishers in Germany. Major publications include

• Texas Lithographs: A Century of History in Images (University of Texas Press, 2023),

• The Art of Texas: 250 Years (editor, TCU Press, 2019), won the Ramirez Family Award for Most Significant Scholarly Book, Texas Institute of Letters, 2020,

• Western Art, Western History: Collected Essays (University of Oklahoma Press, 2019),

• Texas: Crossroads of North America (2^nd edition, Cengage, 2016), co-author with Jesús F. de la Teja and Nancy Beck Young,

• Texas Bird’s-Eye Views (2006, http://birdseyeviews.org),

• Alfred Jacob Miller: Artist as Explorer (Gerald Peters Gallery, 1999),

• The New Handbook of Texas (6 vols.; 1996), editor-in-chief,

• Prints of the West (Fulcrum Publishing, 1994), won the Friends of the Dallas Public Library Award for Book Making the Most Significant Contribution to Knowledge, Texas Institute of Letters, 1995; and Outstanding Book of the Year from the American Historical Print Collectors Society, 1995.

• Audubon's Great National Work: The Royal Octavo Edition of The Birds of America (University of Texas Press, 1993),

• Wanderings in the Southwest in 1855, by J. D. B. Stillman (Artur H. Clark, 1990), editor,

• Views of Texas: The Watercolors of Sarah Ann Hardinge, 1852- 1856 (Amon Carter Museum, 1988),

• American Frontier Life: Early Western Painting and Prints (Abbeville Press, 1987), editor,

• Visions of America: Pioneer Artists in a New Land (Thames & Hudson, 1983), selected as a Book-of-the-Month Club alternate and reprinted as American Canvas: Pioneer Artists in a new Land (1990),

• Prints of the American West (Amon Carter Museum, 1983), editor,

• Texas Museums: A Guide, with Paula Eyrich Tyler (University of Texas Press, 1983),

• Alfred Jacob Miller: Artist on the Oregon Trail (editor, Amon Carter Museum, 1982),

• Posada’s Mexico (editor, Library of Congress, 1979),

• The Rodeo of John Addison Stryker (Encino Press, 1977),

• The Mexican War: A Lithographic Record (TSHA, 1975),

• The Image of America in Caricature and Cartoon (Amon Carter Museum, 1975),

• The Cowboy (Ridge Press and William Morrow and Company, 1975; translated into French and published by Fernand Nathan, 1976),

• The Big Bend: A History of the Last Texas Frontier (National Park Service, 1975, reprinted by Texas A&M University Press, 1996-), won the Coral Horton Tullis Award for Best Book of the Year from the Texas State Historical Association, 1976,

• The American West (1974), with Peter H. Hassrick, published by the United States Information Agency in Polish, Romanian, Serbo-Croatian, Macedonian, and Czech to accompany a USIA-sponsored exhibition,

• The Slave Narratives of Texas (with Lawrence Murphy, Encino Press, 1974; reprinted by State House Press, 1997-), and

• Santiago Vidaurri and the Southern Confederacy (1973; translated into Spanish and published the Archivo General del Estado de Nuevo León, 2002).

He has also written a number of articles and edited the Southwestern Historical Quarterly from 1986 to 2004.

Among the many exhibitions that he has organized is The Art of Texas: 250 Years (TCU Center for Texas Studies and Witte Museum, San Antonio, 2019), Bird’s-eye Views of Texas (Amon Carter Museum, 2006), and Nature’s Classics: John James Audubon’s Birds and Animals at the Stark Museum of Art in Orange, Texas (1992).

Honors include the Gordon Bakken Award of Merit for outstanding service to the field of western history and to the Western History Association, from the Western History Association, (2016), Lifetime Achievement Award from the Center for the Advancement and Study of Early Texas Art (2014), the Capitan Alonzo de León medal for contributions to Mexican history from the Sociedad Nuevoleonesa de Historia, Geografía, y Estadística (2002). His The Art of Texas: 250 Years won the Ramirez Family Award for Most Significant Scholarly Book on Texas from the Texas Institute of Letters (2019); Prints of the West won Dallas Public Library Best Contribution to Knowledge Award from the Texas Institute of Letters (1995) and Outstanding Publication of the Year from the American Historical Print Collections Society (1995); and The Big Bend won the Coral Horton Tullis Memorial Prize for Best Texas Book of the Year from the Texas State Historical Association (1976). Austin College, where he taught from 1967-1969 awarded him a D.H.L. in 1986, and the College of Arts & Sciences at Abilene Christian University named him a Distinguished Alumni in 1995.

Tyler served as president of the Tarrant County Historical Society, as a member of the Texas Historical Records Advisory Board, appointed by the governor, 1988-1993, and was a member of the curatorial review team for exhibitions for the opening exhibition of the Bullock Texas State History Museum, State Preservation Board, Austin, 1998-2001. He is an elected member of the American Antiquarian Society (1986), the Philosophical Society of Texas (1988, serving as president in 2013-14), the Institute of Texas Letters, and Phi Beta Kappa (1978). He is listed in Who’s Who in America as well as a number of other biographical dictionaries.