Tucker began working for the
Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (MFAH) in 1976, when it possessed virtually no photographs. In February of that year,
Target Stores made its first donation to MFAH to begin the Target Collection of American Photography. The MFAH Photography department was established in December, when Tucker was hired as a consultant to act as curator of photography. In 1978, she became the MFAH curator, and in 1984 she was named the Gus and Lyndall Wortham Curator of Photography. She has increased the museum's holdings of photographs to over 24,000 in 2008.[4]
Tucker organized more than forty exhibitions for the Museum of Fine Arts Houston and elsewhere, including retrospectives for
Brassaï,
Robert Frank,
Louis Faurer,
George Krause,
Ray Metzker, and
Richard Misrach; as well as surveys on Czech avant-garde photography, a survey of the history of Japanese photography, and a selection from the Allan Chasanoff Collection.
Many of her exhibitions led to the publication of catalogues and books of photographs. Her book The Woman's Eye includes the work of ten women photographers:
Gertrude Käsebier,
Frances Benjamin Johnston,
Margaret Bourke-White,
Dorothea Lange,
Berenice Abbott,
Barbara Morgan,
Diane Arbus,
Alisa Wells,
Judy Dater and
Bea Nettles. Tucker states, "The Woman's Eye represents the first major attempt to bring together notable photographs by women and to consider, through them, the role played by sexual identity both in the creation and the evaluation of photographic art." In a 2003 interview with Texas Monthly Magazine she comments: "When I wrote The Woman's Eye in 1973, very few women photographers were accepted in the elite of the field. That is no longer true. Photography has also had many important women as photo historians and curators.
Nancy Newhall,
Alison Gernsheim,
Gisèle Freund, and
Grace Mayer were some of the important early women historians. I knew Nancy Newhall and Grace Mayer and admired both very much."[5]
Tucker retired from the Museum of Fine Arts Houston in June 2015.[6]
This was the Photo League: compassion and the camera from the Depression to the Cold War (2001).
Louis Faurer (2002).
Target III, in sequence: photographic sequences from the Target Collection of American Photography (1982).
Chaotic Harmony Contemporary Korean Photography (2009).
War/Photography: Images of Armed Conflict and Its Aftermath. New Haven, CT:
Yale University Press, 2012.
ISBN978-0300177381. Edited by Tucker and Will Michels with Natalie Zelt.