Museum founders

Lothar-Günther Buchheim () (6 February 1918 – 22 February 2007) was a German author, painter, and wartime journalist under the Nazi regime. In World War II he served as a war correspondent aboard ships and U-boats. He is best known for his 1973 antiwar novel Das Boot (The Boat), based on his experiences during the war, which became an international bestseller and was adapted as the 1981 Oscar-nominated film of the same name. His artworks, collected in a gallery on the banks of the Starnberger See, range from heavily decorated cars to a variety of mannequins seated or standing as if themselves visitors to the gallery, thus challenging the division between visitor and art work.

Daniel J. Terra (June 8, 1911 – June 28, 1996) was a scientist, businessman, and art collector. A first-generation Italian-American, Terra earned a chemical engineering degree from Pennsylvania State University in 1931, and founded Lawter Chemicals in Chicago in 1940. The success of his global enterprise enabled him to pursue his cultural interests, assembling an art collection and participating in several Chicago arts institutions.

Ruth Carter Stevenson (October 19, 1923 – January 6, 2013) was an American patron of the arts and founder of the Amon Carter Museum of American Art, which opened in Fort Worth, Texas, in January 1961.Stevenson was born to Amon G. Carter and Nenetta Carter in Fort Worth, Texas, in 1923. She was the second daughter of Carter, the creator and publisher of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. She graduated from the Madeira School and then earned a chemistry degree from Sarah Lawrence College in Yonkers, New York in 1945.Her father specified in his will that a museum specializing in Western American art to be created after his death in 1955, to house his more than 700 art objects depicting the American West, primarily paintings and sculptures by Frederic Remington and Charles Russell. Stevenson hired architect Philip Johnson to design the building and opened the Amon Carter Museum of Western Art in January 1961, following her father's wishes. She was the first president of the museum's board of trustees and was president at her death in 2013.Stevenson was also the first woman to be appointed to the board of directors of the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., and the first woman to become the chairman of that board. Along with local art enthusiasts Owen Day and Sam Cantey III, Stephenson assembled An Art Exhibition for the President and Mrs. John F. Kennedy which decorated the suite in the Hotel Texas in Fort Worth, Texas, occupied by United States President John F. Kennedy and Jacqueline Kennedy on the night before his assassination on November 22, 1963.Ruth Carter Stevenson died at her home in Fort Worth, Texas, on January 6, 2013, at the age of 89.

Margaret Clark Formby (July 12, 1929 – April 10, 2003) was an American educator best known as the founder of the National Cowgirl Museum and Hall of Fame.