Ron Tyler is the retired Director of the Amon Carter Museum of American Art in Fort Worth, Texas (2006–2011). He is a 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), Western Art, Western History: Collected Essays (University of Oklahoma Press, 2019), Texas: Crossroads of North America (2nd edition, Cengage, 2016), Texas Bird’s-Eye Views (2006), Alfred Jacob Miller: Artist as Explorer (Gerald Peters Gallery, 1999), The New Handbook of Texas (6 vols.; 1996), Prints of the West (Fulcrum Publishing, 1994), 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 (1990), Views of Texas: The Watercolors of Sarah Ann Hardinge, 1852–1856 (1988), American Frontier Life: Early Western Painting and Prints (1987), Visions of America: Pioneer Artists in a New Land (1983), Prints of the American West (1983), Texas Museums: A Guide (1983), Alfred Jacob Miller: Artist on the Oregon Trail (1982), Posada’s Mexico (1979), The Rodeo of John Addison Stryker (1977), The Mexican War: A Lithographic Record (1975), The Image of America in Caricature and Cartoon (1975), The Cowboy (1975), The Big Bend: A History of the Last Texas Frontier (1975), The American West (1974), The Slave Narratives of Texas (1974), and Santiago Vidaurri and the Southern Confederacy (1973).
He has also written numerous articles and edited the Southwestern Historical Quarterly from 1986 to 2004. Among the many exhibitions he has organized are The Art of Texas: 250 Years (2019), Bird’s-eye Views of Texas (2006), and Nature’s Classics: John James Audubon’s Birds and Animals (1992).
Honors include the Gordon Bakken Award of Merit from the Western History Association (2016), the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Center for the Advancement and Study of Early Texas Art (2014), and the Capitan Alonzo de León Medal for contributions to Mexican history (2002). His The Art of Texas: 250 Years won the Ramirez Family Award for Most Significant Scholarly Book on Texas (2019); Prints of the West won the Dallas Public Library Best Contribution to Knowledge Award and Outstanding Publication of the Year from the American Historical Print Collectors Society (1995); and The Big Bend won the Coral Horton Tullis Memorial Prize for Best Texas Book of the Year (1976). Austin College awarded him a D.H.L. in 1986, and 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 (1988–1993), and was on the curatorial review team for the opening exhibitions of the Bullock Texas State History Museum (1998–2001). He is an elected member of the American Antiquarian Society (1986), the Philosophical Society of Texas (1988, serving as president in 2013–2014), the Institute of Texas Letters, and Phi Beta Kappa (1978). He is listed in Who’s Who in America as well as in several other biographical directories.
