TEXAS, HOUSTON: NATIONAL MUSEUM OF FUNERAL HISTORY

 November 29, 2022

Our last stop in Texas before flying home was one of the weirdest museums we have ever visited (aside from the International UFO Museum and Research Center in Roswell, New Mexico). 

The 35,000-square-foot National Museum of Funeral History opened in 1992 and, according to their website, has the largest collection of funeral service artifacts in the country. (I can not imagine that any other place even comes close.) The museum's purpose is to "educate the public and preserve the heritage of death care."

I have to confess that I was intrigued just walking through the gift shop to buy our tickets. I could tell this was going to be an unusual experience, to say the least. I was happy to see Frida, but a death mask???

We began with the large Presidential Funeral Gallery.

Just after seeing this famous photo of five living Presidents standing together . . . 

. . . we started learning about their deaths and funerals, starting with George and Barbara Bush and moving backwards in time.

TEXAS, HOUSTON: THE GRAFFITI BUILDING AND SHIPLEY DO-NUTS

 November 29, 2021

Bob knows I love street art/good graffiti, and somehow he found out about the Houston Graffiti Building, located near downtown Houston, and added it to our itinerary. A bunch of old industrial buildings have been "repurposed" as an outdoor art museum. There don't appear to be businesses inside these buildings as the parking lot only had the cars of the people who came to take pictures of the art. 

I don't think any of the art is meant to be permanent, and the pictures I have found online of this site are different than the ones I took, but this is how I will remember our visit. I don't think too many words are needed--just enjoy.

This video shows the front section parallel to the parking lot. From here we circumnavigated the complex until we returned to the parking lot.

TEXAS, HOUSTON: RICE UNIVERSITY AND THE HOUSTON ZOO

November 29, 2021

Since we were flying home out of Houston, we spent our last day of our Southern Texas trip there and managed to cram quite a bit in.

We began the day with a drive-by visit to Rice University. The average GPA for admission to this elite private school is 4.12. It has an acceptance rate of 8-10% and an impressive graduation rate of 95%, which I would guess is due in part to the 6:1 student-faculty ratio. About 7,200 students attend Rice, with about 55% of those being undergrads and 45% being grad students. Tuition is $51,000+ for undergrads.

In his travel agenda for our trip, Bob noted that every incoming freshman is placed in one of Rice's eleven residential colleges, somewhat like Hogwarts houses, where they live, dine, and socialize. 

Less than a mile away from Rice is the Houston Zoo, a 55-acre park with over 600 species of animals. It is relatively small in comparison to zoos like New York City's Bronx Zoo (265 acres), the National Zoo in Washington D.C. (163 acres), or the San Diego Zoo (100 acres), but Wikipedia says it is the second most visited zoo in the United States, or at least it was in 2017.

Cute door handles. (Can you see Bob in the reflection?)

They already had Christmas decorations up, which added some festivity to our visit:

TEXAS: HOUSTON MUSEUM OF FINE ARTS, PART III (KINDER BUILDING - 20th CENTURY ART)

 November 24, 2021

I've never done THREE posts on a single museum, but this museum is really a museum network of seven museums. Had we spent another day in Houston, I would have visited another museum in the network.

After finishing our tour through the first of the Houston MFA buildings, we decided to cross the street to check out a beautiful church we had admired on our way to our parking spot. It turned out to be St. Paul's United Methodist Church, built in the 1930s, and it also turned out to be locked. 

Before heading in to the Nancy and Rich Kinder Building, a relatively new addition to the Houston MFA, we took a quick walk through the sculpture garden.  The one piece that looked the most interesting, Anish Kapoor's Cloud Column, was pretty much un-seeable. 

TEXAS: HOUSTON MUSEUM OF FINE ARTS, PART II (PERMANENT COLLECTION)

November 24, 2021

As mentioned in my previous post, the Texas Museum of Fine Arts is one of the largest art museums in the United States and has a permanent collection of over 70,000 pieces.  I took a photo of each one for this post.

Not really. 

I'll bet you are relieved.

Actually, I only took photos of 7,000 of my favorite pieces. Prepare yourself.

I was stunned, stunned, to see that the artist behind this painting is John Singer Sargent. It's so abstract and scenic.

Gondolas off the Doge's Palace, Venice (c. 1903-4)
by John Singer Sargent

These are the kinds of paintings that I am used to seeing by Sargent:

Young Man in Reverie (1878) by John Singer Sargent

Mrs. Joshua Montgomery Sears (1899)
by Sargent, known for his
skill at painting white.

Paintings by Sargent always stand out to me. He does such a good job of capturing the personality of his subjects.

TEXAS: HOUSTON MUSEUM OF FINE ARTS, PART I, CALDER-PICASSO SPECIAL EXHIBIT

 November 24, 2022

After several days in the wilds of the Gulf Coast (It's a whole different country down there, but then, Texas has about eight different countries within its borders), it was time for the wilds of Houston.

We spent a brief amount of time in Houston in 2012, and for some reason I didn't have a very favorable impression. I did a 180 on this visit.  I loved Houston. I suppose that's why it is a good idea to visit a place more than once.

It helps that our first destination was the Houston Museum of Fine Arts, one of the largest art museums in the United States, and with 300,000 square feet, it is the 12th largest in the world by gallery space. The permanent collection includes roughly 70,000 works from six continents. 

We were very fortunate to catch the "Calder-Picasso Special Exhibit" while we were there. A touring exhibit created by the artists' grandsons, it highlights Calder's and Picasso's artistic affinities as well as their actual physical encounters with each other. 

Portrait of sculptor Alexander Calder January 3, 1957 by Arnold Newman
Portrait of artist Pablo Picasso on June 2, 1954 by Arnold Newman