Exhibitions

November 6, 2024–July 13, 2025

Until the late 19th century, apprenticeship was the primary way people were trained in craft trades in Europe and the Americas. Formal education was mainly out of reach for many children from middle-class and low-income families. Apprenticeship training—a legal contract between a student and a master craftsperson—became an advantageous alternative to traditional education.

Apprenticeships were regulated and monitored by European craft guilds established during the medieval period to control craft production. Their influence extended beyond the training period, and apprentices were generally closely linked to master craftspeople through cultural and social ties, including intermarriage. Within the traditional guild system, women, immigrants, Indigenous and enslaved peoples, and children from low-income families were often excluded. With the onset of the Industrial Revolution, informal apprenticeships were introduced to adapt to innovations and technologies. These varied experiences resulted in a diverse network of skilled craftspeople, both anonymous and renowned.

March 8–July 14, 2024

Rienzi opened to the public in 1999, and ever since, the gardens have provided Houston the opportunity to witness a living collection of plants, flowers, trees, and sensory moments. This small exhibition presents an archival investigation into the history of Rienzi’s gardens.

The original owners of Rienzi—Carroll Sterling Masterson and Harris Masterson III—worked with their friend, landscape architect Ralph Ellis Gunn, to create the design. Under the Mastersons’ guidance and through Gunn’s design and engineering skills, the gardens evolved according to the unique and challenging qualities of the site and the prevailing horticultural and design styles of the times. Color, Scent, and Memory: Rienzi’s Gardens 1954–1999 celebrates the gardens on the 25th anniversary of Rienzi’s opening.

The gardens showcase the beauty of flowers, foliage, and sculptural forms on the banks of Buffalo Bayou, utilizing the natural ravines and towering trees to create a sense of dynamism and grandeur. Themes of color, scent, and memory offer a sense of cohesion throughout the gardens, while distinct formal areas provide a sense of individual space.

March 4–July 30, 2023 / September 1–October 22, 2023

Carroll Sterling Masterson and Harris Masterson III, Rienzi’s founders, enriched their collection of European decorative arts with works on paper, providing the opportunity to view two-dimensional and three-dimensional objects together. Fine Lines highlights watercolors, drawings, prints, and books brought together by these dynamic collectors.

A work on paper offers a degree of immediacy and insight into the artist’s mind that creates an intimate encounter between the artist, work of art, and viewer. The Masterson Collection comprises works on paper by artists including Pompeo Batoni, Jean-Honoré Fragonard, Thomas Gainsborough, and George Romney. Some of the drawings are preparatory sketches, and others were made as independent works of art. Subjects range from studies of nature, places, and the human figure to literary scenes and portraiture.

September 1, 2022–February 26, 2023

Carroll Sterling Masterson and Harris Masterson III, Rienzi’s founders, had a lifelong love of Mexico. Their affinity for the country was part of a larger American fascination with Mexico between the 1910s and 1940s.

Harris attended high school in Mexico City in the late 1920s. Carroll lived in Mexico in the 1940s with her children, Bert and Isla, and second husband, John Cowan.

Looking South: Collecting the Arts of Mexico reflects the Mastersons’ captivation with Mexico, seen in their collection of objects and ephemera from the 18th to the mid-20th century and in Rienzi’s Mexican Room, which they added in the 1970s. This wealth of Mexican material provides a fascinating lens through which to view 20th-century collectors and collecting.

January 15–July 31, 2022

Exploration, war, scientific expeditions, and religious missions feature prominently in European history of the 18th and 19th centuries. These factors fueled an age of discovery in which ships transported explorers, merchants, and migrants from Europe to far-reaching destinations. Vessels returning to Europe carried cargo such as gold, silver, sugar, and tobacco. The ships also transported millions of enslaved men, women, and children from Africa across the empires to serve as labor in the cultivation of these new materials. New encounters and confrontations resulted in a complex cultural landscape.

Materials of Empire features objects from the Rienzi Collection that shed light on the links between Europe, Africa, the Americas, and India. This small exhibition examines the stories objects reveal as well as conceal.

September 1, 2021–January 9, 2022

In the 18th century, new materials and technological innovation sparked an increased demand for luxury objects and useful wares made of ceramics, glass, and metals. These techniques allowed manufacturers to appeal to a broader audience. The Industrial Revolution also influenced the organization of labor. Behind famous names such as Josiah Wedgwood and Worcester Porcelain was a diverse, yet mostly unseen workforce composed of large numbers of women and children.

Hidden Hands focuses on the many hands involved in the production of these wares. The exhibition also challenges established ideas about craftsmanship and artistic authorship.

March 10–July 31, 2021

Throughout the 18th century new ideas about nature, based on scientific discoveries and geographic explorations, resulted in extraordinary representations of the natural world in the visual arts. As European nations explored distant lands and established colonies in the Americas, South Africa, and Asia, botanicals flowed into the continent from all over the world.

Scientific discoveries and the new print culture helped fuel botanical study and the close observation of nature. These new discoveries ignited a craze for landscape gardens both in and out of doors. Perpetual Bloom explores the ways in which botanicals were displayed and re-created in domestic interiors during the 18th century. The exhibition features a variety of porcelain objects, silver, and engravings.