MFAH asks: Which Rienzi are you?
How does a museum attract millennials who don’t care about antiques to a mansion full of them?
Offer an online quiz that makes it personal, and promise “stories of love, lust, and betrayal involving the greatest couples (and excouples) of history and mythology.”
To entice visitors to a recent Twilight Tour at Rienzi, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston posted a “Which Art History Couple are You?” quiz on Buzzfeed’s community site that leads players through questions about their love life. Each question is illustrated with an image, and most of those images lead to descriptions of artworks in the museum’s collection.
The payoff — and who can resist playing just once? — is discovering whether one’s relationship is, say, more Venus and Vulcan, more Colonel and Mrs. Fortnum or more Duke and Duchess of Parma.
Paintings and sculptures featuring those couples are on display at Rienzi, the mansion on Kirby that houses the MFAH’s European decorative arts collection. (The former home of art patrons Carroll and Harris Masterson, this is the sister to nearby Bayou Bend, which houses American decorative arts.)
The Rienzi collection, much of which was acquired by the Mastersons, contains magnificent paintings, sculpture, furnishings and decorative objects. And though Valentine’s Day has passed, there may be no more romantic spot in Houston than the graceful, Romeo and Juliet-esque steps on the north facade leading to the pool outside the home, a Palladianestate wannabe with midcentury ranch-style bones, designed by the legendary John Staub.