Present-day Houston is renowned not only as a center of commerce and political power, but also of the arts. The city is home to some of the finest art museums in the nation, and a thriving community of accomplished painters, sculptors, and other visual artists is firmly established in Houston culture.

But of course that has not always been the case. From 1950 to 1975, Houston grew from a rough-and-tumble city into a major American metropolis, and the arts grew along with it. Houston Reflections tells that story—of how the city grew into itself artistically —through the words of the artists themselves. Beginning in 1992, Sarah C. Reynolds has been conducting, recording, and collecting interviews with the artists who first started coming to Houston in the 1950s, and who continued to settle here over the next two decades, gradually building from their farflung lofts, galleries, and college studios and classrooms the rich arts community that Houston enjoys today.

Houston Reflections brings together first-person accounts of Houston artists, art patrons, collectors, and enthusiasts as they remember their efforts to build a serious arts community and find their place in it. Theirs are the voices of those who gave us the rich, sustaining, and highly productive arts world that so graces the contemporary Houston landscape.

REVIEWS
"Houston Reflections celebrates the years when Houston became a crucible of Modernism, from the 1958 inauguration of the Ludwig Mies van der Rohe pavilion at Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, to the opening of the Rothko Chapel and the Contemporary Arts Museum in the early 1970s.

Thanks to Sally Reynolds' efforts, we have an indelible record of this dynamic era, offered by Houston artists who frame their own experiences against the backdrop of a changing city. A brilliant archival project, Houston Reflections will be a resource for generations to come."
  —Alison de Lima Greene, Curator, Contemporary Art & Special Projects, Museum of Fine Arts, Housto

Read Houston Reflections: Art in the City, 1950s, 60s, and 70s Online

Hardcover: 150 pages
Author: Sarah C. Reynolds
Publisher: Rice University Press (January 2008)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0892630051
ISBN-13: 978-0892630059

INTRODUCTION
From 1950 to 1975, Houston underwent explosive change, growing from an incubator of yet-to-be-realized dreams into a renowned metropolis—a center not only of commerce and political power but also of the arts. During that time, a generation of important artists came of age in a rapidly changing milieu that could be uncomprehending, occasionally hostile, and sometimes enthusiastic when it came to their work.

Houston Reflections collects the thoughtful memories of Houston artists, patrons, collectors, and enthusiasts as they recall laboring to build a serious arts community and to find their place in it. These individuals brought the arts from an ambitious vision to a sustainable critical mass, out of which grew the vibrant arts community the city now enjoys. By looking back at those years of change through the eyes of these seminal figures, we can gain valuable perspective on Houston’s relationship with the arts today. ...

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Sarah C. Reynolds has been a curator, consultant, and dealer in fine art in Houston since 1977. Her involvement in the arts has included the commissioning of eleven public sculptures, curating several public exhibition spaces, and consulting to individuals and corporations acquiring fine art.

She has held leadership positions in many arts organizations, including the University of Houston Moores School of Music, Friends of Fondren Library at Rice University, Houston Municipal Art Commission, Glasstire: Texas visual art online, and the National Foundation for Advancement in the Arts. She was recognized as one of Houston’s Pioneer Women in 1994, and received the Fredell Lack Award for Young Audiences, for outstanding contributions to education and the arts, in 1997.

In 2005, she was honored by the University of Houston Moores School of Music and the Moores Society for eighteen years of support of the school, and most recently received the Friends of Fondren Library Award for distinguished contributions for the enhancement of The Fondren Library and Rice University.

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