1. The Menil Collection www.menil.org
Imprinting the Divine: Byzantine and Russian Icons for the Menil Collection, on view thru March 18, is widely regarded by scholars in the field as one of the most important exhibits of its kind in the United States. The group of more than sixty works, many of which were acquired by Dominique de Menil in 1985 from the noted collector Eric Bradley, spans 600 years, from the 13th to the 18th centuries, and encompasses a number of distinct cultures including Greek, Slavic and Russian. A Musical Tribute to the Byzantine Frescoes, Sunday, February 12, 2012, at 5:30pm at the Menil Collection Foyer. Concert begins at sundown with a procession from the Menil Collection to the Byzantine Fresco Chapel by singers from St. Paul’s Methodist Choir chanting sacred texts. At the Chapel, a concert of Bach’s Cello Suite #2 in D Minor and Mariel, duet for marimba and cello by Osvaldo Golijov, will be given. A Scholarly Consideration of Sacred Art–Moderated by Josef Helfenstein, the Menil Collection Director, on Sunday, February 19, 7pm at the Menil Collection Foyer brings together an art historian, an anthropologist and a theologian for a discussion of the ways in which the Byzantine Fresco Chapel and the larger Menil campus reflect the vision of Menil founders.
2. Houston Center for Photography www.hcponline.org
2012 Print Auction, on view February 22. Each year, HCP holds an annual print auction where artists, galleries and collectors from all over the world contribute high caliber photographic art that is auctioned with 100% of the proceeds directly benefiting HCP’s operating fund.
3. The Rothko Chapel www.rothkochapel.org
The Rothko Chapel, founded by John and Dominique de Menil, was dedicated in 1971 as an intimate sanctuary available to people of every belief. A modern meditative environment inspired by the mural canvases of Russian-born, American painter Mark Rothko (1903-1970), the Chapel welcomes thousands of visitors each year, people of every faith and from all parts of the world.
4. Byzantine Fresco Chapel Museum www.menil.org/visit/byzantine.php
Intimate in scale, the Byzantine Fresco Chapel Museum is the repository of the only intact Byzantine frescoes of this size and importance in the Western Hemisphere. It’s also a manifestation of the redemptive power of art: The chapel was expressly built to house 13th-century Byzantine frescoes that had been looted from their original home in a small chapel in Lysi, Cyprus.
5. Houston Center for Contemporary Craft www.crafthouston.org
Bridge 11: Lia Cook, on view February 4, is a solo exhibition of the work by internationally recognized fiber artist Lia Cook. The exhibit presents large-scale woven images of human faces and introduces several works from a new body of work based on the artist’s recent art-neuroscience collaboration. Cook’s current practice incorporates concepts of cloth, touch and memory. With her use of a digital jacquard loom, she weaves the images and creates monumental works that blur distinctions among computer technology, weaving, painting and photography.
6. Lawndale Art Center www.lawndaleartcenter.org
Unfadeable So Please Don’t Try To Fade Me, on view thru February 25, features all new work by Texas-based artist Carlos Rosales-Silva. Through varied formal languages the work reflects the absorption and appropriation of minority culture by mainstream American society. Observations of mass-produced consumer goods, culturally specific aesthetics, social structure, pop culture and institutionalized education inform the work and raise questions about historical accuracy and social hierarchy. Rather than taking a specific stance, this body of work embodies a sense of cultural confusion through visual inventiveness and humor.
7. Buffalo Soldiers National Museum www.buffalosoldiermuseum.com
The Buffalo Soldiers National Museum pays tribute to African-American military history from the Revolutionary War to modern times. During the 1860s, soldiers of the 10th U.S. Calvary were nicknamed “Buffalo Soldiers” for their fierce fighting ability and bravery.
8. Holocaust Museum Houston www.hmh.org
Returning: the Art of Samuel Bak, on view February 17. Viewers encounter familiar imagery used in unusual, somewhat surrealistic ways as they are led on an astoundingly complex, beautiful and richly colorful journey to, through and from the Holocaust. Born on August 12, 1933, in Vilna, which is now Vilnius, Lithuania, Bak was recognized from an early age as possessing extraordinary artistic talent. The artist continues to deal with the artistic expression of the destruction and dehumanization which make up his childhood memories. He speaks about what are deemed to be the unspeakable atrocities of the Holocaust, though he hesitates to limit the boundaries of his art to the post-Holocaust genre.
9. Children’s Museum of Houston www.cmhouston.org
Cum Yah Gullah, on view February 25, features inspiring songs, candid folktales and African heritage preserved. Cum Yah Gullah (translated to mean Come here, Gullah) explores the rich West African culture carried to the US in the 1600s and uncovers the roots of millions of African-Americans today. Isolated from the mainland on the Sea Islands, along the coast of South Carolina and Georgia, the Gullah people have preserved more of their African cultural history than any other segment of African-American people.
10. The Health Museum www.thehealthmuseum.org
Cells: The Universe Inside Us, on view thru February, features the human body’s composition of millions of cells that are constantly working. Visitors are given the chance to see what happens inside their body every day. Walk through a giant cell, perform virtual experiments, make protein shapes with your shadow and more!
11. Houston Museum of Natural Science www.hmns.org
Discovering the Civil War, on view thru April 29, unveils the layers of time and memories obscuring the American Civil War in a smoky haze. The real human beings, military and civilian, who lived through these years of travail and sacrifice are lost to us, but the records they left behind give us a pathway back to the past. The exhibit is divided into 12 thematic areas that combine great original treasures, engaging touchscreen interactive and social media tools, selected to illustrate the breadth of the conflict and to ask, “How do we know what happened?”
12. Houston Zoo www.houstonzoo.org
Each summer, the Houston Zoo offers the wildly popular Camp Zoofari, weeklong day camps for kids ages 4 to 12. Each February, Houston Zoo members get the first opportunity to register their children for Camp Zoofari. Purchase a Zoo Membership on line at www.houstonzoo.org. Kids have the opportunity to catch a tiger being trained and then talking to the trainer; touching a giant rabbit, a snake and a bird; riding the carousel and eating ice pops; making new friends and having LOTS of fun.
13. Rice University Art Gallery www.ricegallery.org
Joel Shapiro, New Installation, on view February 2. Primarily known for his geometric, abstract sculptures that appear to bound across museum walls, floors and sculpture gardens, renowned American artist Joel Shapiro has been working over the past several years on a new body of work where he transforms entire gallery and museum spaces with room-sized installations of colorful geometric shapes and lines that hover in a kind of suspended animation.
14. The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston www.mfah.org
Revelation: Major Paintings by Jules Olitski, on view February 12. Widely regarded as one of America’s last classic modern painters, Olitski (1922-2007) created brilliant color harmonies and chromatic shifts that became one of the hallmarks of Color Field Painting. Olitski enjoyed enormous acclaim in the 1960s and ’70s, and in 1969 was the first living American artist to be given a solo exhibition at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. This exhibition offers a selective survey of approximately 35 paintings, ranging from the artist’s first forays into stain painting beginning in 1959 to his visionary last compositions in 2007.
15. Contemporary Arts Museum Houston www.camh.org
The Deconstructive Impulse: Women Artists Reconfigure the Signs of Power, on view thru April 15. This exhibit examines the crucial role of women artists in the development of deconstructivism in the 1970s and 1980s. The deconstructive impulse was propelled in significant measure by women who, through the appropriation of mass media and commercial images, sought to reveal the mechanisms of power present in popular representations of gender, sex, race and class. The exhibit features photographs, prints, paintings, videos and installations by various artists.
16. The Jung Center oF Houston www.junghouston.org
Founded in 1958, The Jung Center is a nonprofit educational institution dedicated to the continuing education of the human spirit through psychology, the arts and the humanities.
17. Czech Center MUSEUM www.czechcenter.org
The Czech Center Museum Houston works to preserve, record and celebrate the language, scholarship and arts of Bohemia, Moravia, Silesia and Slovakia.
18. JohnC.FreemanWeather MUSEUM www.wxresearch.org
Exhibits email us at pixie@002mag.com
