THE YEAR IN ARTS
Edgar Degas once said, “Art is not what you see but what you make others see.” As always, Houston’s museums and art galleries offered mind-broadening exhibitions, large and small, all year. But here’s to the other ways the city’s arts organizations opened
1. A new ‘Nutcracker’:
Stanton Welch’s $5 million production of “The Nutcracker” for Houston Ballet, which premiered in November, was the most expensive local arts undertaking this year that didn’t involve the construction of a building — unless you count an Act 1 set with real brass doorknobs and a steel balcony railing. Happily, the show was also a huge success, with lively choreography and magnificent costumes that we look forward to seeing again next year. (The inaugural run continues through Tuesday, with tickets priced $39$175 at houstonballet.org.)
2. Leading ladies:
In May, the venerable Menil Collection hired an intelligent and open-minded new director in Rebecca Rabinow, a Houston native who came home after many years as a curator at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art. Rabinow arrived in July, joining a number of other strong female arts leaders in the city, including Lawndale Art Center’s Stephanie Mitchell, DiverseWorks’ Xandra Eden, Asia Society Texas Center’s Bonna Kol, Alison Weaver at Rice University’s Moody Center for the Arts and Karen Farber at the University of Houston’s Cynthia Woods Mitchell Center for the Arts. (And did we mention that many of them work with board chairs and presidents who also are women?) Havel Ruck Projects’ “Sharp” turned a midcentury modern house in Sharpstown into an marvel of reflected light.
3. Bold moves:
Paul Middendorf took a big chance on the East End by moving his experimental art and performance space, Gallery HOMELAND, to a much larger space in the old Imperial Linen Services building at 3401 Harrisburg in October. Farther out, but even more audacious, Ruby Surls, the eldest daughter of James Surls and Charmaine Locke, spearheaded the effort to reopen her parents’ Splendora compound as a visionary home for art, music and environmental programs in November.
4. High-flyin’ victory:
Sculptor Ed Wilson, with moral support from fellow Houston artists, saw his monumental mobile “Soaring in the Clouds” installed at the George R. Brown Convention Center. The November unveiling ended a story that began in 2014, when Wilson was awarded one of the largest commissions in the history of the city’s percent-for-art program, then had it temporarily rescinded because a few high-powered committee members felt his proposal wasn’t “blue chip” enough.
5. Cavernous curiosities:
Who needs topography when you’ve got cisterns, silos and artists who know what to do with a burned-up house? Houston gained two intriguing venues for site-specific installation art. City inspectors shut down the first show at the Silos at Sawyer Yards, but by October, developer Jon Deal had the hive of repurposed rice silos in the Washington Avenue Arts District ready for a new event. The second round of shows, created for Sculpture Month Houston, showed how well area artists can adapt to the challenge of the dark, cylindrical exhibition spaces now known as Site Gallery.
Even more spectacularly, the Buffalo Bayou Partnership and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston unveiled the dazzling animated video and sound installation “Rain: Magdalena Fernández at the Houston Cistern” in early December. (It’s up through June 4 at 105 Sawyer. Tickets are $8-$10; buffalobayou.org.)
And Havel Ruck Projects thrilled us with “Sharp,” which opened in October, turning a burned-out and condemned midcentury modern Sharpstown home into a marvel of reflected light. (See it through Jan. 2 at 6822 Rowan Lane; free.)