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Best Of Houston® 2023: Best Immersive Art Exhibit

Best Of Houston® 2023: Best Immersive Art Exhibit

The MFAH Gets Hammered with Rare Masterworks

The MFAH Gets Hammered with Rare Masterworks

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Two Photographers, Two Journeys and One Year Unite in MFAH's Robert Frank/Todd Webb Exhibit

By Bob Ruggiero
Sep 28, 2023

In 1955, Robert Frank and Todd Webb were not only two of the most famous photographers in New York, but the entire country. And it was in that year both Frank and Webb got the good news that they would be each receiving a grant from the Guggenheim Foundation to...
Green Book: A Guidebook to Jim Crow at the Holocaust Museum

By Jef Rouner
Sep 6, 2023

The famous Negro Motorist Green Book is one of the best shorthand examples of America’s continued institutional white supremacy even into the Civil Rights era. The Holocaust Museum is hosting an incredible exhibit dedicated to both the book’s history and Black American travel from the Great Depression to the Swingin’...
The Candied Bug Machine at HMNS Was Not Removed Because of an Anti-Semitic Flat Earth Conspiracy Theory

By Jef Rouner
Sep 4, 2023

Down in the basement of the Cockrell Butterfly Center in the Houston Museum of Natural Science, there used to be a very unique vending machine. It sold only edible bug treats like lollipops with real scorpions embedded in them. It was a neat way to learn about humanity’s long history...
The Houston Museum of Natural Science Has Sharks in the Basement

By Jef Rouner
May 26, 2023

A new exhibit celebrating the apex predators of the sea opens today at the Houston Museum of Natural Science. It’s called Sharks!, with an exclamation point. Just to make sure visitors get the message, a giant inflatable shark named Marissa now adorns the outside of the building. The basement of...
Pearlman Collection Makes a Definite "Impression" at the MFAH

By Bob Ruggiero
May 16, 2023

Today, most people take it for granted that if they want to get somewhere, they can. Be it by plane, boat, car, motorcycle or Segway (remember those?), moving from Point A to Point B is simple. But in the early 19th and late 20th centuries, travel took a bit more...
The Firebrand, the Photographer, and Black Power Converge at the MFAH

By Bob Ruggiero
Oct 10, 2022

In the fall of 1966, Stokely Carmichael was a 25-year-old rising star in the the movement and struggle for civil rights and racial equality in the United States. And he was a smart, focused and powerful speaker and organizer. Recently elected as the Chair for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee...
MFAH's Jazz on Film Series Swings Back After Pandemic Absence

By Bob Ruggiero
May 31, 2022

You’ll have to forgive Peter Lucas if he—like so many of us—has sort of lost track of time a bit during the past 2 ½ years living under a pandemic. He’s trying to recall the last time the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston held its Jazz on Film series. “That...
MFAH Celebrates the Mind-Bending Work of M.C. Escher

By Bob Ruggiero
Mar 7, 2022

For most of his adult life, Mick Jagger has probably only rarely heard the word “no” in response to any of his requests. But he heard it at least twice from Maurits Cornelis Escher, the graphic artist better known as M.C. Escher. It seems that the Rolling Stones front man,...
When Ramses II Ruled the World

By D. L. Groover
Nov 22, 2021

Throughout history, saints and sinners, czars and generals have been called “great,” from Alexander of Macedonia, Catherine of Russia, Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon, to Charlemagne of France, Alfred of England, and Kamehameha of Hawaii. But the first to be called so, even during his own lifetime, was Ramses II, pharaoh of...
MFAH is the Only U.S. Stop for Impressive Impressionist Exhibit

By Bob Ruggiero
Nov 15, 2021

When the pandemic caused borders to close, travel restrictions to rise, and venues to close, open, and then close again, it left a lot of folks stranded in places far from their homes. That included a group of guys with last names like Van Gogh, Renoir, Monet, Degas, Cézanne and...
Go-Go's Drummer Gina Schock Gets Snappy in New Book

By Bob Ruggiero
Oct 8, 2021

Almost as much as music, Gina Schock has had a love for an interest in photography for her entire life. And that includes before, during, after, and again during her career as the drummer for the Go-Go’s. Backstage, onstage, at house parties and in various airports and hotels, Schock always...
Mind-Bending Van Gogh: The Immersive Experience Adapts the Troubled Artist for the Digital Age

By Bob Ruggiero
Sep 18, 2021

Of all the Impressionist painters, Vincent Van Gogh (1853-1890) is likely the genre’s Biggest Rock Star. An artist whose name and work is recognizable even among the general non-art loving public, and whose rudimentary life sketch only burnishes his image (the madness, the poverty, the suicide and that auditory appendage...
Best Of Houston® 2021: Best Museum

By Houston Press
Sep 9, 2021

Best Museum - The Menil Collection The Menil Collection's sprawling 30 acre campus is one of the best places in all of Houston to spend an afternoon in search of the inspiration, serenity and introspection that only an expertly curated art collection can provide. The Menil's main gallery — still...
French Impressionism Stars in the MFAH Exhibit From Monet to Matisse

By Bob Ruggiero
Jul 6, 2021

Though he was of German-Argentinian descent and educated in the United States at Harvard, author philanthropist Georges Bemberg (1915-2011) had a passion for France, French culture, and in particular Impressionist art cultivated during his many years of residency there. Before he died, he created The Bemberg Foundation that oversees the...
A Trio of Texas Authors Take on the Many Myths of the Alamo

By Bob Ruggiero
Jun 8, 2021

It is, likely, the most cherished and entrenched story in Texas history. How in late February/early March of 1836, heroic Texas defenders including marquee names like Davy Crockett, Jim Bowie, and William Barret Travis fought a pitched but losing battle inside an old Spanish mission against a bloodthirsty and overwhelming...
Nature Boys Hockney and Van Gogh Star in Centuries-Spanning Dual Exhibit

By Bob Ruggiero
Feb 16, 2021

Though he was born nearly a half century after Vincent Van Gogh died, and has achieved a level of fame and acclaim in his lifetime that The Starry Night painter only did posthumously, multimedia artist David Hockney (b. 1937) has always had an affinity for the works of Van Gogh...
New Pompeii Exhibit at HMNS is a Literal Blast

By Jef Rouner
Feb 15, 2021

The destruction of Pompeii by Mount Vesuvius is one of the most famous disasters in human history. One of the reasons that it has remained in the public mind for so long is that for two centuries archaeologists have carefully excavated the doomed city. The nature of the eruption and...
Seismique Brings Mind-Bending Art Experience To Houston

By Sam Byrd
Dec 28, 2020

Seismique, a 40,000-square-foot art-fueled experiential museum located in Houston’s west side, will feature 40-plus exhibits with dazzling displays of lights generated by 9 million LEDs, color, sound, and natural elements. The multi-dimensional immersive concept is located at 2306 South Highway 6.
The Real School of Rock Beefs Up Its Curriculum

By Bob Ruggiero
Nov 24, 2020

Jason Hanley, Ph.D., says he’s used to the reaction. As the VP of Education and Visitor Engagement at Cleveland’s Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum, he’s attended plenty of educational conferences and meetings to let teachers and school administrators know about Rock Hall EDU, the educational component of...
MFAH Opens Doors (Free Weekend!) of the New Kinder Building for Modern and Contemporary Art

By Bob Ruggiero
Nov 17, 2020

The culmination of events more than a decade in the making — the Kinder Building for Modern and Contemporary Art — was celebrated Monday at a gathering of media, VIPS and donors at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Everyone in attendance was properly masked and seated in socially distanced...