QUAY films at the MFAH
This Thursday, Saturday, and Sunday, the Museum of Fine Arts Houston is showcasing the artistry of filmmakers Stephen and Timothy Quay with a special series including six films spanning 25 years– from their early puppet animation masterpiece Street of Crocodiles to the Houston premiere of their latest film, Through The Weeping Glass. I remember–back before [...]
Cyrus Cylinder Rolls in to Houston: Conqueror’s Ancient Edict Revered For Fairness, Oldness
The British Museum has announced that the Museum of Fine Arts Houston will be one of the stops for the Cyrus Cylinder, a 9-inch piece of baked clay shaped like an inscribed watermelon, which will tour five major museum venues in the United States. The cylinder was inscribed in cuneiform on the orders of the [...]
Blockbuster Bust: Australian Rags Masterpieces from the Prado for Lackluster Attendance, Opens at MFAH on December 16
The Australian Newspaper gleefully reports that Australians did not flock to see the blockbuster Portrait of Spain: Masterpieces from the Prado, on view for the past fifteen weeks at the Queensland Art Gallery in Brisbane. In typically Australian muck-raking style, the newspaper points out that the show, booked by former director Tony Ellwood (who then [...]
DAISIES
“Everything is being spoiled in this world. …Know what? When everything is being spoiled, we’ll be spoiled too!” So proclaim two teenage girls–both named Marie–before embarking on a romp of epic consumption and gleeful havok-wreaking. There is no film on the planet like Vera Chytilová’s 1966 Daisies. An explosive concoction of New Wave cinema, Dadaist [...]
Dragons; beauty at the MFAH
Can I admit that I get a major kick out of this image? That I am thankful for it? Can I say this without losing a significant portion of the readership? I hope so. Yes, it is a racist caricature, and I implore you to believe me when I tell you that my thrill is [...]
“Free” Getty Collected $6.4 million in Parking Fees in 2011
Los Angeles’ Getty Center is free; it’s parking at the remote hilltop facility that costs, and apparently on purpose. After the Getty raised its parking fees over the summer, protests broke out among academics who use the facility regularly. Enterprising journalists examined the institution’s tax returns, which revealed that the institution, with perpetually free admission [...]
COMING TO AMERICA
Robert Frank’s 1950s at the MFAH The new exhibition, American Made: 250 Years of American Art at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston opens next weekend. The show will feature an extremely wide variety of both fine art and decorative works from the museum’s collection, made between the 18th and 20th centuries. They’re boasting an [...]
See the Satyr’s Penis! Museum of Fine Arts Houston Included in Expanded Google Art Project
Photographs of 183 works from the collection of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston will be included in the growing global Google Art Project, which aims to increase the online sharing of visual culture through super high-resoluting scans. Only .05% of the MFAH’s 64,000 objects are on display through Google, but the new service is [...]
Isabel Brown Wilson, Houston Philanthropist, Dies
Philanthropist Isabel Brown Wilson passed away on Tuesday, March 27 at the age of 80. Daughter of Houston entrepreneur George R. Brown and Alice Pratt Brown, she served on the boards of the Brown Foundation and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. She was a patron of Rice University, and donated $14 million towards a [...]
WHAT’S THE WORD FROM JOHANNESBURG?
Vital film document, Come Back, Africa screens at the MFAH. “This film was made secretly in order to portray the true conditions of life in South Africa today. There are no professional actors in this drama of the fate of a man and his country.” So begins Lionel Rogosin’s fascinating 1959 film, Come Back, Africa. [...]
With New Medal Tinterow Outranks Anderson: Texas Museum Directors Polish Their French Honors
Gary Tinterow, former Met curator and new director of the Museum of Fine Arts Houston, is going to be awarded the insignia of Officer of the Order of Arts and Letters by the French government tomorrow in a ceremony at the Cultural Services offices of the French Embassy in New York. That puts him one [...]
MFAH to Unleash Massive Latin American Art Database at January Conference
It’s currently under construction on Friday, January 20 the MFAH’s much touted International Center for the Arts of the Americas (ICAA) digital archive goes online at www.icaadocs.mfah.org. After 10 years and $50 million, the first installment of the phased, multiyear launch begins with 2,500 documents from Argentina, Mexico and the American Midwest, intended to catalyze [...]
Gary Tinterow Named New Director of MFAH
The museum of Fine arts Houston has announced that Metropolitan Museum of Art curator Gary Tinterow will be the museum’s new director, filling the large vacancy left by the death of Peter Marzio. Tinterow was one of two finalists reportedly vying for the MFAH’s top job; the other Kimerly Rorschach, will remain director of The [...]
MFAH Education Uptick: Opens New Downstairs Edu-Center, Wins Grant for Digital Literacy Lab
The Museum of Fine Arts Houston has opened its new Kinder Foundation Education Center in the lower tunnels outside the Brown Auditorium Theater. With futuristic chairs that libraries love, free wi-fi, and a digital conucopia of art info, the space is the perfect place to experience vicariously the art you’ve just passed on the way [...]
Life Out Of Balance, Writ Large – Koyaanisqatsi Tonight at the MFAH
I want to call attention to one film in the Cinema Arts Fest that, while nestled quietly and rather buzzless in the schedule between exciting premieres, audiovisual performances, and parties, is a truly amazing work of grand cinematic spectacle, and one of the festival’s rare opportunities. The 1982 film Koyaanisqatsi, showing tonight at 7:30 the [...]
MFAH’s Ancient Artifacts Illuminated with Ultramodern LEDs
The Museum of Fine Arts Houston has begun its switch to energy-saving LED lamps, installing 150 Toshiba A19′s in its Pre-Columbian Gallery and the exterior and lobby of its Caroline Wiess Law building. The museum expects to install more lamps in Cullinan Hall in October and the newly revamped Japan Gallery next year. A19 lamps [...]
World on a Wire: A new/old film by R. W. Fassbinder comes to Texas screens.
Phillip K. Dick meets Jean-Luc Godard in the fever dream of a vintage collector! OK, that was my quick attempt at a simple and catchy, hyperbolic hook for Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s mostly unknown 1973 film, World on a Wire. Maybe not the best tagline, but not completely off the mark either. This brilliant oddity was [...]