The FABULOUS 50s

Houston art at the dawn of the SPACE AGE

Frank Freed Museum Hours nd.

We’re putting on a show!

We are lucky once again to be able to mount the show in the splendid gallery in the historic Julia Ideson Building of Houston Public Library Downtown, where we have installed a series of exhibitions over the last 12 years that have focused on the earlier history of art made in HOUSTON by HOUSTON artists, spanning the decades from 1890 to 1960.

Installation photographs of our previous exhibitions in the Julia Ideson Gallery: Texas Modernism[s]: Houston/Dallas in the 1930s (2022); Emma Richardson Cherry: Houston’s First Modern Artist (2013); Planned, Organized and Established: Houston Artist Cooperatives in the 1930s (2017); and South and North of the Border: Houston Paints Mexico (2018).

This capstone exhibition in the series will include 100 paintings, sculptures and objects made in Houston by Houston artists. The spark for the show grew from an intriguing observation made by Houston astronaut/artist, Alan Bean (1932-2018), when he saw an early watercolor by Emma Richardson Cherry (1859-1954), founder of the modern Houston art culture. (To learn more about that, you’ll have to come to the exhibition!)

Between the end of World War II and the decision in 1961 to locate the headquarters of NASA here, Houston transformed from Magnolia City into Space City. The population more than doubled, the economic and social realms altered radically and the city moved from regional hub to international metropolis. The influx of new people, new fortunes and new influences had their impact on all aspects of the city including the arts.

Chester Snowden [Cityscape] c.1950.

1. Houston’s population grew by more than 150% from 1940-1960.

Houston in 1950 and 1960.

2. The chemical and oil/gas industries grew exponentially.

Leila McConnell Refinery at Night 1957.

3. Houston transforming from a regional to an international city.

David Adickes [Two Musicians] 1953.

4. The arts, building on the foundation of pre-WWII, exploded with activity, based on new participants coming in and ever-increasing exposure to the national and international art worlds.

Dick Wray [Mixed-media abstract] c.1960.

5. Racial integration of MFAH (and some other Houston organizations).

John Biggers [Title not known] 1957.

6. The Ludwig Mies van der Rohe addition to MFAH, completed in 1958.

Cullinan Hall, Museum of Fine Arts Houston, 1958, designed by modernist architect, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe.

7. Federation of the Arts, April 1957 in Houston – where Marcel Duchamp delivered his lecture “The Creative Act.”

Lowell Daunt Collins, Marcel Duchamp and Paul Maxwell at the Federation of the Arts Conference in Houston, 1957 (l); and a mixed-media work by Maxwell 1956 (r).

8. In 1959, Houston gallerist Meredith Long took Texas artists (Jack Boynton, Paul Maxwell, Dan Wingren) all the way to Paris in an exhibition at Galerie du Colisée, when, according to Long, a cowboy road the streets of Paris on opening night. (Note: The cowboy pictured here is not that cowboy, whose photo is still being sought, but he might have looked somewhat the same - and the painting did hang on the gallery walls that night.)

Jack Boynton Snow Grill 1956.

Not a photo of that cowboy - but maybe he looked something like this.

Who we expect to include: Artists who had gallery shows, or appeared in Houston Annual Exhibitions from 1945 to 1961 – many possibilities, but for sure Biggers, Adickes, Mears, Gadbois, McConnell, Colville, Wray, Boynton, Stout, Charlton, Dixon, Sullivan, Laird, Dolejska, Snowden, Sprohge, Maxwell, Skinner, Carlson, Preusser, Freed and many more possibilities.

And pieces from the local artist-driven crafts cooperative, Handmakers, founded in 1957, which grew and thrived during the period, as well as examples from others making 3D works.

Lenders to the exhibition will include the Museum of Fine Arts Houston, and numerous private collections.

Erik Sprohge [Five Male Figures] 1961.