Spring is in the air because today we welcomed our first fellows of the year, Brian Chikwava and Andria Derstine to the artist’s residency program Brian Chikwava is an African writer from Zimbabwe, currently living in London and Andria Derstine is curator at the Allen Memorial Art Museum at Oberlin College in Ohio.  For the lucky few who have been Brown Foundation Fellows in the past, you will surely remember the thrill...

Rodeo at Rienzi, the MFAH's house museum for European decorative arts? Yes, it's true! This morning I decided to treat myself to a store-bought coffee (it is Friday, after all). Upon entering the grocery store, I immediately noticed the plethora of cowboy hats and boots. My companion reminded me that today is "Go Texan Day" (forgive me for not knowing, I'm a recent transplant!). I didn't think much of it until arriving at Rienzi where some of the longtime staff...

In late January, Rienzi’s first ever exhibition, English Taste: The Art of Dining in the Eighteenth Century, closed. I find that it is still slightly jarring to walk through the Dining Room, where during the four months the exhibition was on view, I became used to the sight of dishes such as larded hare, flummeries, and samphire. Replacing the elaborate dinner table setting is a display of Paul Storr silver pieces. Three...

This March, the Rienzi and Bayou Bend Book Club is reading The Arcanum: The Extraordinary True Story by Janet Gleeson. Focusing on the development of Meissen porcelain in the 18th-century, Gleeson tells the tale of three Johanns, all instrumental in the process of creating “white gold”: Johann Frederick Böttger, Johann Gregor Herold, and Johann Joachim Kändler. Meissen, founded in 1710, was the first European porcelain manufactory to develop hard-paste porcelain similar to Asian...

When Eastman Kodak Co. filed for bankruptcy last month, it didn’t just mark a drastic point in a company’s history– it marked the end of an era. After all, the story of Kodak is not simply one of economics, but one of innovation, nostalgia and heritage. With its creation of Kodachrome film in 1935, the first commercially successful amateur color film, Kodak forever changed how we viewed the world. We recently sat down with Anne...