Texas Art Travel: Houston
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- “Synchronicity of Color – Blue (2008)”, Margo Sawyer, Discovery Green, 1500 McKinney, Downtown. Downtown Houston is in the middle of an urban renaissance, thanks to Discovery Green, a 12-acre public/private urban redevelopment project next to the George Brown Convention Center and Minute Maid Park. Parks, gardens and public art have helped to make it an attractive place to live and visit. Artist Margo Sawyer’s colorful stacks of metal boxes were commissioned for the site and help to obscure underground garage stairways. Nearby is a 30-foot tall Jean Dubuffet outdoor sculpture and San Francisco artist Doug Hollis’s “Mist Tree” and “Listening Vessels”.
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- “Tolerance“ (2011) Jaume Plensa, Buffalo Bayou, Allen Parkway @ Montrose Blvd., Montrose This civic art installation was commissioned and funded by Houston philanthropist Mica Mosbacher and a group of private donors to depict “tolerance, harmony and diversity” in Houston. Spanish artist Jaume Plensa, whose outdoor sculptures have been installed all over the world, designed a series of seven kneeling figures and placed them under the majestic oak trees along the Buffalo Bayou jogging path. According to the artist, the ten-foot tall figures represent the seven continents of the world. The figures are fabricated out of jumbled stainless steel lettering derived from alphabets across the globe.
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- Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (Caroline Wiess Law Building), 1958/1974, architect Mies van der Rohe, 1001 Bissonnet St., Museum District. This is the only U.S. museum designed by Mies van der Rohe. The 1958 Mies-designed addition was attached to Willard Ward Watkin’s original 1924 Neoclassical building which had been added on to in 1926 and further expanded with a new wing designed by Kenneth Franzheim in 1953. In 1974, the second van der Rohe addition to the museum, the Brown Pavilion (shown here), was completed. The original Watkin building and all of the subsequent additions are still standing, although the orientation of the museum was reversed from facing the landmark Mecom Fountain and now faces Bissonnet St.
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- Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (Audrey Jones Beck Building), 2000, architect Rafael Moneo, 5601 Main St., Museum District. In 2000, the Museum of Fine Arts opened a separate three-story building across the street from its original museum building on Bissonnet St. The new Beck Building on Main St. was designed by Spanish architect Rafael Moneo, who received the coveted Pritzker Prize in 1996. Connecting the two buildings is a large underground tunnel, which features James Turrell’s alluring installation “The Light Inside”. The Beck Building provides the museum with almost 200,000 square feet of new space, making possible the exhibition of large traveling blockbuster shows.
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- Lillie and Hugh Roy Cullen Sculpture Garden, 1986, designed by Isamu Noguchi, 5100 Montrose Blvd., Museum District. Designed by Isamu Noguchi, this refreshing urban oasis features more than 25 outdoor sculptures, installed directly across the street from the Fine Arts Museum. David Smith’s “Two Circle Sentinel” is shown here, flanked by Marino Marini’s “The Pilgrim (Il Pellegrino)”, Bryan Hunt’s “Big Twist”, Joseph Havel’s “Exhaling Pearls” and Frank Stella’s “Decanter”. Works by Henri Matisse, Auguste Rodin, Alberto Giacometti, Ellsworth Kelly, as well as Texas artists Linda Ridgway and Jim Love are also featured in this acre of tranquility.
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- Glassell School of Art, 1979, architect S.I. Morris, 5101 Montrose Blvd., Museum District The Glassell is the teaching arm of the Fine Arts Museum. The reflective glass brick building, unveiled in 1979, is sited next to the museum’s Cullen Sculpture Garden.
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- Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, 1972, architect Gunnar Birkerts, 5216 Montrose Blvd., Museum District. CAMH was founded in 1948 to exhibit new art. The non-profit, volunteer-run organization built a small building in 1950 and hired its first paid professional director, Jermayne MacAgy, in 1955. The striking Gunnar Birkerts’ building opened to great fanfare in 1972. In the 1990s, the museum re-focused its mission to exhibit art from the previous forty years. “Molecular 3 + 3″, a James Surls sculpture, was installed on the lawn in front of the museum in March 2011 and is on extended loan to the museum, courtesy of the artist.
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- Rothko Chapel, 1971, architects Philip Johnson, Howard Barnstone, Eugene Aubry, 1409 Sul Ross St., St. Thomas University. In 1964, painter Mark Rothko received a commission from John and Dominique de Menil to create a series of paintings specifically for an interfaith chapel they were planning at the edge of the St. Thomas University campus. Rothko painted 18 monolithic dark, brooding canvases for the space—14 of them hang there today. It has been a beloved community treasure ever since it opened in 1971 and serves as a private meditative refuge and public meeting space. In 2000, it was placed on the National Register of Historic Places. Barnett Newman’s “Broken Obelisk” is installed next to the reflecting pool designed by Philip Johnson. In 1969, the city of Houston turned down the de Menil’s offer to buy and install the sculpture in front of City Hall as a memorial to Martin Luther King, Jr. City Hall’s loss; Rothko Chapel’s gain.
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- The Menil Collection, 1987, architect Renzo Piano Building Workshop, 1515 Sul Ross St. The legendary collection of John and Dominque de Menil was almost fifty years in the making before it ended up in this museum specifically designed for it. It was the first U.S. commission for Italian architect Renzo Piano and his Building Workshop and is known for its inventive manipulation of natural light. Like the de Menils, the museum is quietly elegant and simple in design. One of the mandates to Piano was to design a building that seemed “large on the inside, but small on the outside”, since it is sited in the middle of a neighborhood of bungalow homes.
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- Cy Twombly Gallery, 1995, Renzo Piano, 1501 Branard St. More than thirty works of art by American abstract painter and sculptor Cy Twombly (1928-2011) are permanently showcased in this satellite building adjacent to the Menil. It is Renzo Piano’s second project commissioned by the Menil Foundation and was produced in collaboration with the Dia Art Foundation which was co-founded by the de Menil’s youngest daughter, Philippa.
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- Dan Flavin Installation at Richmond Hall, 1998, 1500 Richmond Ave. The de Menils started collecting Dan Flavin’s minimalist sculptures in 1970. In 1996, Dominque de Menil commissioned Flavin to produce a permanent installation of his work at this former 1930s grocery store.
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- Byzantine Fresco Chapel, 1997, architect Francois de Menil, 4011 Yupon St. Designed by John and Dominique de Menil’s architect son, Francois, the stone and concrete building contains no windows, except a single, expansive skylight. It houses two 13th century frescoes that had been stolen from a small chapel in Cyprus in the 1980s. With the blessing of the Cypriot government, the de Menils arranged to purchase and restore the two frescoes that had been broken into 38 pieces to sell on the black market.
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- Blaffer Gallery, University of Houston, 120 Fine Arts Building, re-opens spring 2012. Opened in 1973, the Blaffer is the art museum at the University of Houston. Its high quality exhibitions are regional, national and international in scope and focus on the art of the previous 100 years. The Blaffer also has an extensive award-winning series of educational outreach programs.
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- Orange Show, 1979, Jeff McKissack, 2402 Munger St., Gulf Freeway. Created single-handedly by a retired postman, the Orange Show is one of the most famous folk art sites in America. Jeff McKissack began building his homage to the orange in 1956, using scrap materials and found objects. In 1979, he declared his “show” finished and opened his private fantasyland to the public.
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- “Art Car Capitol of the World”, Carter Ernst, Orange Show, 2401 Munger St. The annual Art Car Parade, the first and largest in the world, is the Orange Show’s biggest community event and has grown into a 3-day affair with more than 250 outrageously decorated vehicles. Carter Ernst’s whimsical commemorative sculpture was created as part of a parade entry and is now permanently installed in front of the Orange Show administrative offices.
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- Art Car Museum, 140 Heights Blvd. For those art car fanatics who can’t wait for the next Art Car Parade, look no further than the Art Car Museum. Ann Harithas, one of the first to present an “art car” in a formal arts venue, opened the museum in 1998 with her husband, James, who is the Director of the Station Museum of Contemporary Art. Artist David Best created the distinctive museum entrance, using car parts and scrap metal.
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- Beer Can House, John Milkovisch, 222 Malone St., Rice Military. In 1968, it was just a modest house in the middle of a neighborhood, but 39,000 cans of beer later, it had turned into an important stop on the tour of Houston’s great folk art sites. Clearly, John Milkovisch loved beer more than just drinking it. For twenty years, the retired upholsterer used the cans to ingeniously decorate his home and front yard. Strings of flattened cans dangle from the roof like shimmy fringe. Stacked can bottoms create the front yard fence. After he died in 1988, his wife and children maintained the curiosity for several years, eventually turning it over to the Orange Show Foundation for keeps.
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- Flower Man’s House, 2003-present. Cleveland Turner, 2305 Francis St. Turner spent most of his life as a homeless wino until he found his calling in 2003. Following a close call with death, he vowed to kick the bottle and get down to the business of building his legendary front yard attraction. It’s in a constant state of becoming, but flowers are always a predominant theme.
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- Project Row Houses, 1993, 2505-2521 Holman St., Third Ward. The award-winning Project Row Houses have helped to revitalize the historic Third Ward, one of Houston’s oldest African American communities, by restoring and converting 22 row houses into artists’ studios and residences. Established by African American artists and community activists in 1993, this non-profit urban renewal effort makes the houses available to working artists to use on a rotating basis for permanent installations and workshops. Recently, students at Rice University’s Building Workshop built attractive low-income rental housing behind the row houses.
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- Tribute to the American Presidents, David Adickes, Adickes Sculpturworx Studios, 2500 Summer St. It’s the only time you’ll see Bill Clinton, Martin Van Buren, Barak Obama and George H. Bush all lined up in a row. Much less 17-feet tall. David Adickes has made name for himself creating larger than life concrete sculptures of American Presidents and patriots. The 67-foot tall Sam Houston along I-45 south of Huntsville is his and so were the 43 giant busts at the now defunct President’s Park in Williamsburg, Virginia.
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- Art League Houston, 1953 Montrose Blvd., Montrose. The Art League of Houston was founded in 1948 and incorporated as a non-profit in 1953, the first alternative art space in Houston. They expanded into a new building in 2007, giving them more gallery space and studios for their adult and children’s art classes. Every year since 1983, the League has honored an artist with their Texas Artist of the Year award.
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- Lawndale Art Center, 4912 Main St. Lawndale started out in 1979 in a warehouse on Lawndale St., but in 1993 the alternative exhibition space moved to Main St. where there are 4 gallery spaces and an outdoor sculpture garden. Regular annual events include the Day of the Dead show, the Design Show and a summer juried open call, “The Big Show.” Almost all exhibitions are based on proposals of experimental, non-commercial work by emerging and established artists, with an emphasis on artists with a connection to Houston. The outdoor mural “Famous Monsters”, painted by Dan Anguilu, a driver for the Houston Metro’s light rail system, went up in August and will be there until at least June 2012.
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- Diverseworks Art Space, 1117 East Freeway. A showcase for groundbreaking visual and performance artists, musicians and playwrights, Diverseworks was founded by a group of artists almost thirty years ago. It has become one of the best known contemporary art centers in the country.
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- Fotofest, 1113 Vine St., #101. Founded in 1983 by documentary photographers/journalists Fred Baldwin and Wendy Watriss and European gallerist Petra Bontler, Fotofest is the oldest and longest running photography festival in the U.S. They moved their offices into the Vine Street Studio warehouse in 1999 where they debuted a year-round photography exhibition space.
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- Houston Center for Photography, 1441 W. Alabama St. Ever since it opened in 1981, HCP has helped to keep photography in the forefront of Houston’s art scene. HCP has an ambitious schedule of photography exhibitions, lectures, and classes.
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- Station Museum of Contemporary Art, 1502 Alabama St. The sign on the front door says it best: “Strong Subject Matter Not Suitable For Sensitive Viewers”. Now in its 10th year, the Station has a stellar reputation for mounting provocative, world-class exhibitions, often political in nature, that most traditional institutions run from.
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- Houston Center for Contemporary Craft, 4848 Main St. HCCC focuses on objects made of fiber, metal, glass, clay and wood. The Center, which opened in 2001, includes an exhibition space, artists-in-residence workshop spaces, and a great gift store.
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- Texas Gallery, 2012 Peden St. One of Houston’s oldest galleries, Texas Gallery caters to the big money crowd and specializes in well-known contemporary East and West Coast artists.
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- Moody Gallery, 2815 Colquitt St. Betty Moody’s warm and welcoming gallery doors opened in 1975 to show the work of emerging and mid-career contemporary American artists, especially those with a connection to Texas.
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- The Zephyr, 1985, architect Arquitectonica, 2625-43 Colquitt St., Gallery Row or Upper Kirby
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- 4411 Montrose, 2006, architect Peter Zweig, 4411 Montrose Blvd., Museum District Just a couple blocks from the museums, this contemporary building is home to the Anya Tish Gallery, Barbara Davis Gallery, Peel Gallery and Wade Wilson Art.
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- Isabella Court, 1929, architect William Bordeaux, 3903-17 S. Main St., Midtown. Listed on the National Register of Historic Places, this vintage mixed-use Spanish Colonial Revival building was brought back to life in the early 1990s. Two floors of apartments are above the ground floor contemporary art galleries, which include Art Palace, Bryan Miller Gallery, Inman Gallery and the debut of the Devin Borden Gallery.
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- Hiram Butler Gallery, 4520 Blossom St. Located in an idyllic, heavily wooded half-acre garden in a residential neighborhood, the gallery opened in 1984 to display contemporary sculpture, painting, drawing and prints by regional, national and international artists.
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- Student Murals, Mack H. Hannah Hall, 3100 Cleburne St., Texas Southern University. It’s a trek to find these in the middle of the TSU campus, but it’s worth the effort. Make time to see the stunning work of master muralist, Dr. John Biggers, on the walls of TSU’s Sterling Student Center, the Jones School of Business and the University Museum.
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- Houston Museum of African American Culture, 4807 Caroline St., Museum District, Opening in 2012. Established to provide programs that draw from the culture and history of African Americans, this museum, several years in the making, fills a definite gap in Houston’s museum district.
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- Asia Society Texas Center, 2012, architect Yoshio Taniguchi, 1370 Southmore Blvd., Museum District, Opening April 2012. Designed by super star architect Yoshio Taniguchi, the $48.4 million building is almost assured to have a star on the map of important Houston architectural monuments by the time it officially opens in April 2012. The 38,000-square-foot building takes up an entire block and includes an art gallery, theater, classrooms, reception spaces, a geothermal cooling and heating system and a fantastic view of the Houston skyline framed by an infinity water garden. Taniguchi is best known in the United States for his 2004 expansion of New York’s Museum of Modern Art.
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- H-Town Streats. We end this meandering tour of Houston back on the street. Don’t be deceived by the naively-painted figures on H-Town’s food truck—their menu is quite enlightened and delicious. I found them parked on a Thursday in front of the Inversion Coffee House at 1953 Montrose @ Willard. Check Twitter for a weekly schedule of their locations and menus
Ever since the mid-1970s, I’ve traveled to Houston whenever it was time for a good art fix. Back then, there were just a handful of fine art galleries to visit. The Museum of Fine Arts was a long way from becoming one of the largest museums in the United States. And the Contemporary Arts Museum had just made its landing, clad in a shiny stainless steel building.
Even though the Houston art scene was just a glimmer, there was always a good reason to spend five hours driving there, thanks to John and Dominque de Menil. The fabled French couple, who emigrated to Houston at the start of World War II, had methodically amassed one of the most important modern art collections in the world. In the mid-70s, they were sharing it with the rest of us through a series of remarkable exhibitions staged out of a hastily constructed bunker of a building they commissioned at the edge of the Rice University campus. It was unpretentious in every way, except for the amazing art on the walls. There you would be, in a room full of Joseph Cornell boxes or Magritte paintings, not a guard or surveillance camera in sight. There was nothing like it anywhere.
What a difference an oil boom makes. In 1970, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston counted 7,000 objects in its permanent collection. Over the next two decades, the collection more than doubled in size. Today, it has grown to a staggering 63,000+. The museum is renowned for their Renaissance, Baroque and Impressionist masterpieces, pre-Columbian and African gold, and its growing collection of Latin American art. The museum is also known for its photography collection, ranked one of the top collections worldwide, thanks to brilliant curating by Anne Wilkes Tucker who arrived at the museum in 1976 when there were no photographs in the collection. Tucker is still curator and still adding to the collection.
In 1986, the MFAH built an Isamu Noguchi-designed outdoor sculpture garden across the street. By the 1990s, it was clear that their Mies van der Rohe-designed museum could no longer contain the expanding collection. In 2000, the Audrey Jones Beck Building was built across the street, connecting seamlessly to the Caroline Wiess Law Building through an underground tunnel. Today, annual attendance at the museum brings it among the top ten museums in the United States. Expansion plans continue, with a third building on the drawing board.
Even though the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston (CAMH) has no permanent collection, it has distinguished Houston in the national cultural arena through award-winning, cutting edge exhibitions which focus on recent international, national and regional art. Exhibitions, always free, cover all media, from architecture to video to performance art installations. Among CAMH’s firsts, it gave photographer Cindy Sherman her first solo museum show in 1980.
In 1987 the de Menils unveiled a permanent home for their renowned 16,000-object collection. The understated Montrose-area building was designed by Renzo Piano to blend into the established residential neighborhood around it. Like so many of the surrounding bungalows, the low-slung Menil is painted gray with white trim. In addition to presenting work by contemporary artists, its admission-free exhibitions spotlight different parts of the collection which is strong and still growing in 20th century painting, sculpture, drawing, prints and photography and also includes significant collections of antiquities and the arts of Africa, Pacific Islands and Pacific Northwest Coast. The work of Rene Magritte, Max Ernst and Victor Brauner form the core of the well-known Surrealism holdings.
The Menil campus extends beyond the museum to include a series of buildings in a park-like setting, including apartments and houses—all painted in signature Menil gray. These are rented to staff for living quarters, used for museum offices or leased to independent non-profit organizations.
The Rothko Chapel was the first of several art-specific buildings built by the de Menils. Beginning in 1964, they commissioned American abstract painter Mark Rothko to create paintings for a public meditative space they planned for St. Thomas University. Rothko painted 14 dark, monochromatic canvases for the enormous octagonal-shaped room that opened in 1971. Four long benches invite visitors to sit in the somber atmosphere of an overcast day, created by filtered natural light. The chapel is one of the most visited sites in Houston and has served as a museum and non-denominational sanctuary for more than 40 years.
Cy Twombly was the next artist to be honored by the Menil Foundation with his own permanent building. The Cy Twombly Gallery, half a block behind the Menil Collection, opened in 1995. Twombly, who emerged from the Black Mountain/Rauschenberg/Johns art orbit of the 1950s, helped to design the eight galleries that display a retrospective of his life’s work, including enormous “blackboard” paintings, sculptures and drawings.
Richmond Hall, a former grocery store that the Menil Foundation bought in 1985 and initially repurposed into a temporary exhibition space, is a few blocks away from the Twombly Gallery. In 1996, Dominque de Menil invited American sculptor Dan Flavin to create a permanent installation in the vintage building. Just before his death, Flavin completed the designs for three Richmond Hall light sculptures, all using his trademark medium, fluorescent lights. It’s easy to spot the corner building on Richmond Ave. by looking for the green fluorescent-lined roof.
The Byzantine Fresco Chapel was among Dominique de Menil’s final philanthropic gestures to Houston. It opened in 1997 and displays a set of 13th century frescoes that had been ripped out of a chapel in Cyprus by looters. Recognizing the spiritual importance of the frescoes, Mrs. de Menil rescued them and through the Menil Foundation restored them. Today, they are acknowledged as the most important intact Byzantine frescoes of their size in the Western Hemisphere. The intimate chapel/museum was designed as a sacred public space by architect Francois de Menil, Dominque’s youngest son.
For all of its vanguard mindset and cultural sophistication, Houston is still very much connected to the swamp cultures of the Gulf. It’s this exquisite straddling of the high and the low that makes Houston such a fascinating city. If you’re into underbelly, fabulous funkiness, just spend the day driving around and you’ll see what I mean.
Artist Dick Wray had a lot to do with what I know about Houston. I met the colorful and recently departed Mr. Wray when we were in a group show together in Fort Worth in the 1970s. Over the years, he generously shared with me his Houston, which was off-the-museum-grid and over in industrial and working class parts of town. Our best adventure was meeting Jeff McKissack when he was still in the middle of building his Orange Show.
McKissack, a retired postman, lived in a modest frame house a few blocks off the Gulf Freeway and walked across the street faithfully every day to a vacant lot to work on his homemade monument to the orange, which he believed was the secret to a healthy and long life. He envisioned that his “show,” made out of scrounged materials, would someday outdraw the Astrodome as a tourist attraction. He hit his mark.
After McKissack’s death in 1980, a group of arts patrons led by Marilyn Oshman created a non-profit organization to keep the Orange Show going. Today, it is a world-famous folk art site and is considered an international tour de force at the front of the line among visionary art connoisseurs. It has had an enormous impact on the local art community, not the least of which is its wildly successful annual Art Car Parade.
Once the Art Car Parade took off, there was no stopping the Art Car Museum. A privately-funded contemporary art space, the museum’s exhibitions emphasize art cars, but also include the work of artists who are not well known. A recent show spotlighted art created by musicians. The gallery-sized space was founded by artist Ann Harithas, Houston’s original art car enthusiast, and her husband James Harithas, who moved to Houston in 1974 to be the director of the CAMH.
The Orange Show and Art Car Museum are indicative of Houston’s blossoming into the most vibrant art scene in Texas. Houston was a perfect storm—the town has always been full of mavericks, some of whom had a glut of money to spend. It’s a city of dreamers and schemers. A wide open port city with no zoning. High society in Houston has never been as closed and stuffy as other cities. The landed gentry have never been very grounded.
By the 1980s, alternative spaces and exhibition venues were popping up all over town. The Sarah Campbell Blaffer Gallery opened on the University of Houston campus. The Lawndale Art Center grew out of a 1979 fire that forced the University of Houston’s Art Department’s painting and sculpture studios to be moved to a warehouse on Lawndale Avenue. Diverseworks Art Space was created by a group of artists. The Houston Center for Photography and FotoFest, a biennial series of international photography exhibitions and programs, were founded. The Houston art scene had arrived full bore.
Amazingly, all of these institutions had staying power and are alive and well today. The Blaffer Gallery, recently re-named the Blaffer Art Museum, is closed until spring 2012 for major renovations. Lawndale, Diverseworks and FotoFest have moved to bigger, permanent spaces. The Station Museum of Contemporary Art, under the direction of the irrepressible James Harithas, is going strong after ten years of ambitious and enlightened exhibitions, many dealing with subjects too politically challenging for mainstream institutions.
Project Row Houses, located in the Third Ward, one of Houston’s oldest African American communities, has grown from 22 shotgun houses to 40 properties. Created by a group of African American artists who wanted to resurrect a historic, decaying inner-city neighborhood, the project provides rotating artist exhibition and residency spaces, as well as low-income residential and commercial rental spaces, a gallery and a park.
A block from the row houses is Cleveland “The Flower Man” Turner’s House, a festively over-decorated front yard folk art environment, which has become one of the city’s top tourist attractions. Rivaling it in popularity is John Milkovisch’s landmark Beer Can House, located in the middle of a residential neighborhood off of Memorial Dr.
More outdoor art installations, including a 30-foot tall Jean Dubuffet sculpture (relocated from 1100 Louisiana St.), can be found at Discovery Green, a 12-acre downtown park near the convention center. Keep an eye out for the fancifully decorated “art golf carts” which rove the park on the weekends.
Evenings are the best time to experience the newest addition to the city’s outdoor sculpture inventory, Tolerance by Barcelona artist Jaume Plensa. At the intersection of Allen Parkway and Montrose Blvd., seven giant Buddha-like figures kneel along the Buffalo Bayou jogging path. Plensa designed the ten-foot stainless mesh figures to be lit from within, making for a stunning nighttime visual statement, even as a drive-by.
Houston has one of the largest collections of public art at its two airports, installed inside the terminals and outside them. If you aren’t arriving by air you can check out the Intercontinental Airport collection of works here and works in the Hobby Airport as well as other civic art projects at the Houston Art Alliance’s website.
Now that you have a little background on the Houston art scene, check Glasstire’s exhibition listings to see what’s up now in the city’s museums, alternative spaces and numerous commercial galleries. And if you’re hungry and need a place to stay, check out the hotel and restaurant recommendations in the listings below.
Food $-$$$
Reef
$$$
Innovative Gulf seafood from Chef Bryan Caswell. The coolly aquatic mid-town restaurant is housed in a hip-ly renovated mid-century car dealership.
2600 Travis St. @ McGowen
77006
(713) 526-8282
Pondicheri
$$
Anita Jaisinghan brings you the “best of classic, home style and street foods of India.” In the Kirby District north of the Colquitt galleries>
2800 Kirby, Ste. B132
77098
(713) 522-2022
Cafe Express
$$
A casual, healthy gourmet chain from Houston and the only place close to eat if you are at the MFAH, Glassell or CAMH.
Museum of Fine Arts, Houston
5601 Main St.
77005
(713) 639-7370
Tacos a Go-Go
$
Good tacos, laid-back fun atmosphere, just a couple light rail stops up from the MFAH and close to the Isabella Court galleries. It’s also on the same block as The Continental Club live music venue.
3704 Main St.
77002
(713) 807-8226
The Breakfast Klub
$
Hearty southern breakfasts including favorites like catfish and grits and wings and waffles.
3711 Travis St. @ Alabama
77002
(713) 528-8561
H-Town StrEATs
$
High-end food truck dining, check out their parmesan truffle fries. Check Twitter.com/htownstreats for location schedule
Melange Creperie
$
Offers great Parisian-style crepes and it’s run by artist and art blogger Sean Carroll and his wife Tish Ochoa. Usually parked in front of Mango’s Café in the Montrose area.
Westheimer @ Taft St.
(713) 291-9933
Bars
Anvil Bar and Refuge
Houston’s first and best craft cocktail bar.
1424 Westheimer Rd. Ste. B
77006
(713)523-1622
The Mink
A hip but not hipster bar
3718 Main Street
77002
(713)522-9985
Poison Girl
Laid back and arty crowd.
1641 Westheimer Road
77006
(713) 527-9929
Lodging
(You can usually find a hotel downtown for around $100 if you check sites like Priceline, Expedia, Hotels.com, etc.)
Hilton Americas, Houston
Near the George R. Brown Convention Center and Discovery Green Park.
1600 Lamar
77010
(713) 739-8000
Hotel Zaza
Used to be the venerable Warwick, now the tarted-up and aggressively boutique Zaza. Great location next to the MFAH and CAMH. Quick light rail trip up to the Isabella Court galleries and down to the always-great Rice Gallery.
5701 Main St.
77005
(713) 526-1991
Sara’s Bed & Breakfast
Located in the Heights, Houston’s first (and 19th century) suburb.
941 Heights Blvd.
77008
(713) 868-1130
Museums
Asia Society Texas Center
1370 Southmore Blvd.
77004
(713) 439-0051
Opening late fall 2011
Byzantine Fresco Chapel
4011 Yupon St.
77006
(713) 521-3990
Closed Mondays & Tuesdays
Contemporary Arts Museum Houston
5216 Montrose Blvd.
77006
(713) 284-8250
Closed Mondays & Tuesdays
Cy Twombly Gallery
1501 Branard St.
77006
(713) 525-9400
Closed Mondays & Tuesdays
Fine Arts Museum, Houston
1001 Bissonnet St. (Caroline Wiess Law Building)
5601 Main St. (Audrey Jones Beck Building)
77005
(713) 639-7300
Closed Mondays
Glassell School of Art
5101 Montrose Blvd.
77006
(713) 639-7500
Houston Museum of African American Culture
4807 Caroline St.
77004
(713) 526-1015
Opening in 2012
The Menil Collection
1515 Sul Ross St.
77006
(713) 525-9400
Closed Mondays & Tuesdays
Museum of Fine Arts, Houston
1001 Bissonnet
77005
(713) 639-7300
Closed Mondays
Lillie and Hugh Roy Cullen Sculpture Garden
Montrose Blvd. @ Bissonnet St.
77006
(713) 639-7300
Richmond Hall
1500 Richmond Ave.
77006
(713) 520-8512
Closed Mondays & Tuesdays
Rothko Chapel
1409 Sul Ross St.
77006
(713) 524-9839
Alternative and University Exhibition Spaces
Art Car Museum
140 Heights Blvd.
77007
(713) 861-5526
Closed Mondays & Tuesdays
Art League of Houston
1953 Montrose Blvd.
77006
(713) 523-9530
Closed Sundays
Blaffer Art Museum
University of Houston
120 Fine Arts Building
77204
(713) 743-9521
Closed for renovations until spring 2012
Diverseworks Art Space
1117 East Freeway
77002
(713) 223-8346
Closed Mondays & Tuesdays
Fotofest
1113 Vine St. #101
77002
(713) 223-5522
Houston Center for Contemporary Craft
4848 Main St.
77002
(713) 529-4848
Houston Center for Photography
1441 W. Alabama St.
Houston
(713) 529-4755
Closed Mondays & Tuesdays
Lawndale Art Center
4912 Main St.
77002
(713) 528-5858
Closed Sundays
Project Row Houses
2505-2521 Holman St.
77004
(713) 526-7662
Closed Mondays & Tuesdays
Rice University Art Gallery
Sewall Hall
6100 Main St.
77005
(713) 348-6069
Station Museum of Contemporary Art
1502 Alabama St.
77004
(713) 529-6900
Closed Mondays & Tuesdays
University Museum at Texas Southern University
3100 Cleburne St.
77004
(713) 313-7145
Closed Mondays
Artist-Run Spaces (The hours can be funky so check the websites first.)
BOX13 ArtSpace
Over in the East End but worth the trip.
6700 Harrisburg Blvd
77011
(713) 533-8692
the joannex
Brian Rod and Cody Ledvina operate this space in a house near the Menil.
1401 Branard
77006
Optical Project & Bill’s Junk
Artist and Glasstire Newswire Editor Bill Davenport curates exhibitions and junk in side-by-side spaces.
1125 E 11th St.
77009
(713) 863-7112
Skydive
Artist Sasha Dela shepherds a host of fascinating shows and events.
2041 Norfolk St.
77098
info@theskydive.org
For the city’s NUMEROUS commercial galleries, check the Glasstire Houston listings.
Folk Art Landmarks
Beer Can House
222 Malone St.
77007
(713) 880-2008
Flower Man’s House
2305 Francis St.
77004
Orange Show
2402 Munger St.
77023
(713) 926-6368
Closed Mondays & Tuesdays
Art in Public Spaces
Buffalo Bayou/Tolerance
Allen Parkway @ Montrose Blvd.
77007
David Adickes Sculpturworx Studio
2500 Summer St.
77246
Discovery Green
1500 McKinney
77010
George Bush Intercontinental Airport
2800 N. Terminal Rd.
77032
(281) 230-3000
Texas Southern University
Mack H. Hannah Hall
3100 Cleburne St.
77004
William P. Hobby Airport
7800 Airport Blvd.
77061
(713) 641-4000
(All photos copyright Christina Patoski.)
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Christina Patoski is a journalist and photographer who lives in Fort Worth. A former NPR reporter, she has been published in Newsweek Magazine, The New York Times, Life Magazine, and USA Today. Her photographs have been exhibited in museums and galleries throughout the United States, including the Smithsonian’s Museum of American History. She received a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship grant for her video and performance art which was shown at the Whitney Museum of American Art,the Walker Art Center and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.
also by Christina Patoski
- Monks, Like Swallows, Return to Dallas' Crow Collection - April 17th, 2013
- "Norman Bel Geddes Designs America" at the UT Harry Ransom Center - January 2nd, 2013
- "Noble Change: Tantric Art of the High Himalaya" at the Crow Collection - January 1st, 2013
- DAVID BYRNE'S DAY OFF - November 8th, 2012
- FUTURAMA: "Visions of the Future" at the Ransom Center - October 28th, 2012
