Orange Show announces new president, board
Paige Johnson recalls a childhood colored by the Orange Show. Her mother, Stephanie Smither, founded the art-filled Smither Park and was also close with Marilyn Oshman, the founder of the Orange Show Center for Visionary Art. Johnson remembers her parents taking her to Orange Show events, visiting the monument on weekends and driving past the Beer Can House before it became a part of the Orange Show.
“I feel like I’ve been part of the Orange Show family as far back as I can remember,” Johnson says. “It really feels like it’s something that’s in my blood. To the point that I don’t think about it as anything other than that.”
The Orange Show Center for Visionary Art this week announced Johnson as its new board president. Johnson will be joined by five new board members: Dr. William E. “Billy” Cohn, who is executive director for the Center for Device Innovation at the Texas Medical Center; philanthropist Gerry Waters; scholar Luz Garcini of the Baker Institute; venture capitalist Charles D. Powell; and Aliyya Stude, vice present of Sotheby’s Houston.
The additions to the Orange Show board are part of a large-scale update and expansion for the organization and its Houston campus. In November 2021, the Orange Show Center for Visionary Art announced a massive expansion project that included the acquisition of a 5.7-acre property adjacent to the existing 2.3-acre campus. Rogers Partners is overseeing the development of the new campus, which will allow for more art, more workshops and more events.
“With our expansion, we’ve been able to grow our board,” Johnson says.
“Our legacy board members, their leadership and excitement and vision got us to this point.
In addition to her familial history with the Orange Show, Johnson and her husband, Todd Johnson, are prominent and dedicated collectors of outsider art.
But she says the vision for the Orange Show Center for Visionary Art is to welcome as much of Houston as possible.
“The Orange Show has a history of passion for art,” she says. “There is a delicate balance in creating new interest, getting new people on board and being true to the original vision. But we definitely want to make an impact beyond outside art collectors. The goal is to celebrate creativity.”
Orange Show executive director Tommy Ralph Pace told the Chronicle in 2021, “I think even those who feel like they don’t understand art can step over that barrier visiting here.”
Part of the organization’s work is conceptual. It also must oversee grittier work preserving the treasures on hand. The original Orange Show monument first started to take shape in the 1950s, when a former orange truck driver from the Peach State decided to honor a fruit he loved dearly. Jefferson Davis McKissack was an experienced welder — and cosmetologist — when he arrived in Houston to work as a mail carrier. He assembled his peculiar monument for decades, completing it in 1979, less than a year before he died.
In the wrong hands, McKissack’s outside art landmark might have been designated for demolition. Instead, it served as the seed for the Orange Show Foundation, which would later become the Orange Show Center for Visionary Art. The organization grew to include events like the Art Car Parade and the Beer Can House, as well as Smither Park.
Still, the original monument requires regular upkeep to protect it from the elements, labor that is both specific and continual. Johnson says the key is to “not throw good money at a bad idea or bad money at a good idea.” The Orange Show Center for Visionary Art recently received $500,000 from the U.S. National Parks Service’s Save America’s Treasures organization.
Johnson adds, “There is a delicate balance there. We have to include preservation and also execute great ideas about how to expand our programming and reach more people. You don’t want to add too much. And you also have to protect the resources we have. The real goal is to bring in more creative spirits and give them a place where they can build more community.
“When you talk about Houston’s growth, the monument and the new campus plan, I feel like they get closer and closer to the heart of this city. We want to reach further out into the community. We want all of Houston to see this as their stomping grounds.”
While Johnson’s mother worked closely with the Orange Show founder Marilyn Oshman, her father was also an Orange Show board member who also served on the board for the Houston Ballet.
“He was a lawyer, a straightlaced kind of guy,” she says. “But he and my mother exposed me to so many different sorts of art. When I was a kid, he’d take off work, we’d all jump in the Suburban and visit all sorts of artists throughout the South. She recites a quote of his: “Art in all forms reflects the consciousness of a society. Where art flourishes, so does society.”
So Johnson says the Orange Show will do as it has always done and “come back to keeping artists as the focal point. Doing that, I think, gives voice to a community.”