Anne Wilkes Tucker Photography Study Center
About the Study Center
The Anne Wilkes Tucker Photography Study Center offers a versatile space to engage with the Museum’s rich holdings of prints, drawings, and photographs, which comprise more than half of the entire MFAH collections but are on public view only for short periods because of light sensitivity. Equipped with a 30-foot display wall, easels, magnifying devices, and more, the study center invites anyone with an interest in photography or works on paper to gain intimate access to these collections. Art history degrees are optional. Curiosity is welcome!
Planning Your Visit
Open by appointment Tuesday through Friday, from 10 am to 4 pm.
What can I see?
The study center offers an ideal space to view examples of prints, drawings, and photographs in person. Before you make an appointment, explore the collection online to find works that you wish to view, taking note of the accession numbers (for example: “2010.234.2”) to provide to the collection manager.
The collection manager can also assist you in locating suitable materials if given a general description of your course curriculum, scholarly pursuits, or personal interests. Example descriptions could include:
- Early French photographs
- Works related to the theme “music”
- Prints by Picasso and his peers
For class visits, please select no more than 30 works to view during a single appointment.
How do I make an appointment?
Setting up a time to use the study room is as easy as calling 713-639-7751 or emailing [email protected]. Please reach out at least three weeks in advance of your preferred appointment time.
What can I bring?
Pencils, notebooks, sketchbooks, laptops, and tablets are welcome, as is non-flash photography for personal use. Please leave coats, bags, dangling jewelry or scarves, pens, and any food or drink in the lockers located outside the study room entrance.
What should I expect?
Prior to your appointment, the collection manager will send detailed instructions about where to meet. When you arrive, the collection manager will greet you, give you a visitor badge, and escort you to the study center, at which point you may store your excess belongings in a locker.
Photography Collection
The Museum's photography collection comprises more than 38,000 works spanning the full history of the medium. This world-renowned collection acknowledges the wide embrace of photography and the many roles it plays in modern culture, and it therefore includes exceptional examples of documentary, scientific, fashion, advertising, and vernacular photography, as well as works intended solely as art.
Prints and Drawings
The prints and drawings department is the keeper of the Museum’s encyclopedic collection of works of art on paper from the Middle Ages through the 21st century, including prints, drawings, watercolors, pastels, paintings on paper, artist books, and printmaking matrices.
The Manfred Heiting Book Collection
The nearly 7,500 volumes in the Manfred Heiting Book Collection complement the Museum’s photography holdings, allowing researchers to examine, side-by-side, exhibition prints by noted photographers and the reproductions in book form.