As much as you'll love the rich and rewarding conference program amid
the gorgeous setting of the Hilton Americas conference hotel, no
ARLIS member should conclude their visit to Houston without sampling
the city's impressive cultural institutions. Fortunately for the
visitor, most of these are situated within the single area of the
Houston Museum District that is now serviced by the city's new light
rail line (the closest stop is just a mere six blocks from the
conference hotel, connected via a low-cost trolley during daytime
hours).
The Houston Museum District, http://www.houstonmuseumdistrict.org, is
comprised of sixteen cultural institutions whose collections range
from the broadly historical to the narrowly focused, nearly all of
which enjoy great acclaim.
The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston is the largest of these, with its
original Neoclassical structure and two strikingly Modern additions
by the legendary Mies van der Rohe, the new building by Rafael Moneo,
and the Noguchi-designed sculpture garden. Other structures of the
MFAH main campus include buildings for the administration and the art
school. Noteworthy holdings include the Beck Collection of
Impressionist and Post-Impressionist art, the Modern and contemporary
art collections, the photography collections, and the site-specific
light installation by James Turrell that comprises the tunnel
passageway under Main Street.
The Houston Museum of Natural Science is often overlooked due its
non-art historical collections, but in fact the HMNS is Texas' most
visited museum and will feature an exhibit of the nature photographs
of Andreas Feininger in addition to the major exhibition, Gold!
Natural Treasure, Cultural Obsession, which provides visitors the
chance to explore the role of gold in history, art, and culture. HMNS
permanent collections include a planetarium, three-story butterfly
house, and the world's finest display-quality collection of gems and
minerals.
The non-collecting Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston is housed in an
award-winning, all-metal structure by Gunnar Birkets & Associates
(with metal rooftop palm tree by Mel Chin) and boasts daring and
unique exhibits such as the current Double Consciousness: Black
Conceptual Art Since 1970, which examines the influence of a number
of the critical art movements of the late 1960s on African-American
art of the past three decades.
The Menil Collection is slightly away from the Main Street axis of
the Museum District, but will prove well worth the added effort to
get to its campus, which consists of the supremely elegant main
building by Renzo Piano, the Rothko Chapel (with Barnett Newman's
"Broken Obelisk" in its reflecting pool), the Byzantine Fresco Chapel
Museum (the only intact Byzantine frescos in the Western hemisphere),
the Cy Twombly Gallery, and Richmond Hall (one of only two permanent
site installations by Dan Flavin).
Other highlights of the Museum District include the Houston Center
for Contemporary Craft, the Houston Center for Photography, Lawndale
Art Center, and the Holocaust Museum Houston (the first of its kind
in the southwest).
Conference tours offer the opportunity to visit cultural institutions
away from the Museum District, such as the folk-art Orange Show and
the MFAH's decorative arts collections at the formerly private
residences of Rienzi and Bayou Bend in the upscale neighborhood of
River Oaks. Several tours also offer the chance to visit Museum
District collections in a professionally guided manner, such as the
photographic collections tour of the Houston Center for Photography
and the MFAH, and a tour of the Menil campus. Please see the
<http://www.arlis-txmx.org/arlisna2005/programSearchResults.php?programSearchType=category&cat_id=8&showDetails=yes>online
conference program for full tour descriptions.
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