The Houston Art History Interview Project launches this Sunday, December 15, 2-3:30 p.m. in the Favrot Auditorium at the Glassell School of Art in Houston. The project is the brainchild of Pete Gershon, the author of Painting the Town Orange: The Stories Behind Houston’s Visionary Art Environments (History Press, 2014) and Collision: The Contemporary Art Scene in Houston 1972 – 1985 (Texas A&M University Press, 2018). Gershon worked with the Creating a Living Legacy Project to document the artwork of the late multimedia artist Bert L. Long, Jr., who died in 2013. Gershon, the program coordinator for the Core Residency Program at the Glassell School of Art at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, helped arrange Long’s professional papers for access and preservation.
For the event, Gershon will present highlights from videos collected during the project’s first year, and highlight features of the organization’s website. There will also be a scanning and oral history station on site for visitors who want to bring in photographs and ephemera, or tell their stories about the Houston art community. Visitors are encouraged to visit the station at the end of the event to add to the ongoing endeavor of gathering archival images and video, as they continue to become available from the artists and others in the art community.
The histories will be available here beginning December 10.
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The Houston Art History Interview Project collects oral histories from members of the city’s art community, documenting both well-known figures and those who’ve rarely had the opportunity to share their stories. The goal is to capture straightforward, long-form documentation of the perspectives of artists, administrators, and patrons. Speaking about their own work and their own lives in their own words, the participants give voice to the birth and growth of Houston’s rich art history.
