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I interviewed the Museum’s own Russ Lane, who served as lead preparator for James Turrell: The Light Inside. We talked about the unique requirements of this special exhibition and Russ’s father’s interest in flying, a shared experience that has created an even deeper appreciation of Turrell’s work. SS: Hello, Russ! Can you introduce yourself?RL: My name is Russ Lane, and I am a preparator (or …

If you haven’t already seen There is no archive in which nothing gets lost, hurry! Head over to the museum's Glassell School of Art soon, before the show closes on November 25. Sally Frater, the curator and a Core Program critical-studies resident, selected works that are fresh, so to speak—made within the past decade. The title of the exhibition comes from a phrase in the book Deep Storage …

In the wake of the Eastman Kodak Co. filing for bankruptcy, I sat down for a chat with Anne Wilkes Tucker, the Gus and Lyndall Wortham Curator of Photography at the MFAH. Our conversation evolved from the history of a company to how Kodak forever changed the way artists and historians viewed the world. As we talked about the shrinking presence of snapshots in an increasingly digital world, a new …

In the wake of the Eastman Kodak Co. filing for bankruptcy, I sat down for a chat with Anne Wilkes Tucker, the Gus and Lyndall Wortham Curator of Photography at the MFAH. She discussed the history of Kodak and the monumental news that “something that huge is gone.” In part two of our conversation, Tucker explains how the Kodak snapshot changed the way artists and historians viewed the world around …

When Eastman Kodak Co. filed for bankruptcyin January, the news 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 invention in 1935 of Kodachrome film, the first commercially successful amateur color film, Kodak forever changed how we view the …

Bayou Bend has acquired a rare sampler, skillfully stitched by an African American girl born in 1829. Mary J. Greenfield Smith was a student at the school of the Oblate Sisters of Providence—the first Roman Catholic society for women of African descent in the United States. The Oblate sisters founded a school that embraced a curriculum similar to schools for white girls of the time: preparing …

Color Fieldpainter Jules Olitski didn’t stay in one place very long, artistically speaking. Unlike his contemporaries—Helen Frankenthaler, Morris Louis, Kenneth Noland—Olitski changed his artistic techniques frequently. “Olitski is unique among the Color Field painters in the rapidity of his evolution,” says Alison de Lima Greene, MFAH curator of contemporary art and special projects. Greene …