BIG
C I T Y, S M A L L MUSEUMS When it comes to culture in Houston, it pays to get off the beaten track. By Michael Hardy
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ouston
is
blessed
with
an
abundance of cultural institutions, from Space Center Houston to the Houston Zoo. No matter your age or interests, the city has something for you. The centrally located Museum District alone attracts visitors from around the world to its nineteen museums, including the Children’s Museum, the Houston Museum of Natural Science and the Contemporary Art Museum. But in addition to the big names, there are dozens of smaller museums hiding in plain sight throughout the greater Houston area. Even lifelong Houstonians may not have heard of--let alone visited--some of these lesser-known gems.
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PEARL
FINCHER MUSEUM OF
FINE ARTS few blocks down the road from Meyer Park in the fast-growing Houston suburb of Spring is one of the city’s most exciting young arts organizations. Formerly known as the Museum of Fine Arts, Cypress Creek, the organization changed its name in 2006 after a major donation from the Fincher Family Trust. In 2008 it moved into its current location in the old Cypress Creek Library, which closed when the new Barbara Bush Library opened up next door. Although it has a small permanent collection, The Pearl focuses on temporary exhibitions of regional and international artists, borrowing works from local collectors as well as its partner organization, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. Around 25,000 people visit the museum each year, half of them children. Recent exhibitions have been devoted to Depression-era photography, American Impressionist painting and nineteenth-century European portraiture. Admission is free, although a $5 donation is suggested for adult visitors.
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1940 AIR TERMINAL
MUSEUM he next time you take off or land at Hobby Airport, keep your eyes peeled for a whitewashed, Art Deco-style building on the western edge of the airport complex. Built in 1940, this was Houston’s first air terminal. When it opened, commercial aviation was still relatively new and Houston was served by only two airlines, Eastern and Braniff, both of which flew the Douglas DC-3. The terminal was also used by Houston oil companies, which shuttled its executives to remote oilfields on private airplanes such as the Northrop Delta and the Fairchild 45. In 1954 the original terminal was supplanted by the much larger Houston International Airport Terminal, which remains in operation. The 1940 terminal was preserved thanks to the Houston Aeronautical Heritage Society, which raised the money to lease the terminal from the city and convert it into a flight museum that opened to the public in 2004. Today, visitors can wander through the renovated terminal to view an authentically restored waiting area, air traffic control station and flight announcement board. On display throughout the building is a treasure trove of flight memorabilia--vintage pilot uniforms, hundreds of model planes, even tiny bottles of complimentary alcohol handed out by defunct airlines like Pan Am and Continental. Parked outside the terminal is a World War II-era Lockheed Model 18 Lodestar that visitors can climb inside. The rest of the museum’s aircraft collection is stored in a cavernous hangar a short walk away. There, you’ll find a Sikorsky S-58 jumbo helicopter; the nose and front fuselage of a Douglas DC-6; a Hawker 125 business jet; and several jet flight simulators. Admission is $5 for adults and $2 for children. 60
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CY TWOMBLY
GALLERY ost Houstonians know about the worldrenowned Menil Collection, which opened in 1987 in a leafy inner-loop residential neighborhood next to the University of St. Thomas. But since its opening, the museum has expanded well beyond its main building. Today, the thirty-acre Menil campus encompasses a bookstore, a restaurant, the Byzantine Chapel, a permanent Dan Flavin installation in Richmond Hall, and the recently opened Menil Drawing Institute. But perhaps the most significant of these additions remains the Cy Twombly Gallery, which opened in 1995 and has been drawing art world cognoscenti ever since. Cy Twombly (1928-2011) was one of the most important American painters of the second half of the twentieth century. A contemporary of Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns, Twombly developed his own highly idiosyncratic visual style characterized by childlike scribbles, unexpected bursts of color, and handwritten quotations from ancient Roman texts--all of it sprawling across massive, wall-devouring canvases. Twombly worked with Renzo Piano, the Italian architect who designed the original Menil building, on a freestanding gallery that would house a series of works he had donated to the museum. The square stone building’s most innovative feature is its roof, which uses a complex system of louvers and white canvas sailcloth to filter natural light down to the galleries, creating ideal viewing conditions for Twombly’s epic yet delicate paintings. True, almost any painting would look good in such exquisite light. But it’s the unique collaboration between artist and architect that makes the Cy Twombly Gallery such a special place. Admission to the Menil Collection, including the Twombly Gallery, is always free--so what are you waiting for?
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