Fund drive aims to cover cost of home for museum
In a suburb like Katy, the arts and culture scene is scant when compared to Houston’s downtown fine arts venues and museum district.
Fighting that notion is Ana Villaronga-Roman, who is pushing to build a permanent arts establishment in Katy.
“Once people leave the university life and they move on to the suburbs, they lose the arts and culture,” said Villaronga-Roman, founder of Katy’s Contemporary Art Museum. “This museum and other locations of arts and crafts, of dance studios, can have an important role in making sure we have enough culture around us.”
For years, Villaronga-Roman has advanced arts and culture in suburbs.
It’s why she established her facility in downtown Katy in 2013, making it the first art museum in Fort Bend County.
It’s also why she fought back
when the museum’s landlord planted a “for sale” sign in front of the venue in late 2015 amid a dispute with Villaronga-Roman regarding the building’s purchase price.
The planned permanent facility will be on the corner of Avenue A and George Bush Drive in downtown Katy, about five miles from the current site of the museum.
Museum officials are beginning a capital campaign to raise $3 million for the construction of the building, which they hope to open by 2018.
It follows other efforts in recent months to plant fine arts facilities in and around Katy. In January, the community-staffed “World Theatre” opened on South Mason Road. Plans to build a different community theater south of Katy Mills Mall in the next several years are also set.
Founders of those facilities have cited a desire to enhance arts and culture in suburbs and have chosen Katy because of its explosive growth.
Villaronga-Roman has spent some 27 years in Houston’s arts scene. She’s the founder of the Katy Culture & Arts Alliance and the Fort Bend Culture Alliance and an adviser to the Rosenberg Arts Alliance. She’s also served as an adviser for suburban arts and culture at the Center for Houston’s Future, a regional think tank.
“There’s not as many arts and culture places to attend (in the suburbs); so people don’t have a choice but to go inside (Loop 610),” Villaronga-Roman said. “There’s this whole idea that people outside the Loop don’t really matter; so I very much would like to change that.”
The Katy museum’s new facility will be on a halfacre owned by Multiplicity, a business that offers artsand-crafts classes. Museum officials and Multiplicity are finalizing a lease deal for the land that will include a future purchase option, Villaronga-Roman said.
The new location will include more than 6,000 feet of shelf space, a classroom and the state’s first museum rooftop garden. It will have a modular design that gives the entire facility the ability to be taken apart in pieces and moved.
This setup is crucial to Villaronga-Roman given the problems that have plagued her current facility.
Since first leasing the museum’s building at 805 Ave. B in 2013, Villaronga-Roman said her and her staff have attempted several times to buy the facility. But the landlord and museum officials have not been able to settle on a price.
The disagreement peaked when the owner anchored a “for sale” sign in front of the property last year, striking an uncertain future for the museum and its handful of instructors and volunteers. The landlord removed the “for sale” sign soon after planting it.
More than 27,000 visitors have walked through the museum since it opened, Villaronga-Roman said. It has displayed contemporary art from around the state and nation and hosted frequent workshops. This year, it launched a statewide competition named Texas Biggest 10 for Art.
Its lease will expire in 2017, but Villaronga-Romanstillhopestopurchase the building while also acquiring the new location, though that outcome seems less probable.
The museum has received financial support from Fort Bend County Precinct 3 Commissioner Andy Meyers, who gave $4,000 from his charity, Fort Bend Charities, and $1,000 from his unused election campaign account in the past year.
Similar support from elected officials or government, though, has been difficult to garner, Villaronga-Roman said. Meyers agreed.
“I’d love to see more elected officials support the arts,” Meyers said. “I’ve not found other elected officials like me who share the same passion for it. I don’t try to use the government money to do that because I understand the sentiment that not everyone likes art.”
Meyers operates his own literary and visual arts competition for area students. Each year, the top competitors get to run their own show at the Katy museum.
Houston City Council has more resources to put toward the arts than suburban officials do, Meyers said. Major corporations are also more likely to donate to city arts projects.
The Katy museum gets by mostly through its $2 admission, gift shop items and workshops, which can average $100 per class for an individual.
The city of Katy distributed a $22,000 grant toward the museum’s Texas Biggest 10 for Art contest but has not funded anything else because the museum is a private organization, according to Kayce Reina, the city’s tourism marketing specialist. Reina said the city owns the Veterans of Foreign Wars post/museum located downtown, as well as the land that the city’s Heritage Museum sits on.
Still, fine arts don’t seem to be at the top of priorities in suburban areas, Villaronga-Roman said. Even with venues in suburbs such as The Woodlands, where the Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pavilion opened in 1990, fine arts facilities are dominated by Houston’s core area, as is the case in many major U.S. cities.
Villaronga-Roman does, however, feel encouraged by the suburban arts and culture locations that do arrive.
The Willow Fork Drainage District, she said, has constructed several mix-use parks and a plaza around the Katy area.
Other suburban venues exist in places such as Stafford, which has a local performing arts and conference center. In Sugar Land, a 6,000-seat, sleekly designed performing arts center will also open soon.
“I think that the timing is right,” she said. “I’m seeing more for-profits and nonprofits. It’s the right time because you can see the population growth coming out of Houston. This area is now a big part. People keep coming. So, we need to do more for the county and suburbs.”