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    Coolest Art Exhibit

    Coolest indoor playground ever? New MFAH exhibit lets H-Town dive into art

    Tarra Gaines
    May 11, 2014 | 10:28 am

    The long, hot Houston summer has almost begun, and the Museum of Fine Arts is taking pity on us all by giving the city what is possibly the coolest all-ages, indoor playground ever,Soto: The Houston Penetrable.

    Oh yeah, it’s art too.

    The Houston Penetrable is both a space and object of art as 24,000 PVC (polyvinyl chloride) tubes, all hand painted, hang from a two stories height to the floor. The work was conceived by Venezuelan artist Jesús Rafael Soto specifically for Ludwig Mies van der Rohe-designed Cullinan Hall. Viewers are meant to become participants in the art, wading into the space.

    Viewers become swimmers or dancers as soon as they enter, and their movements have to slow down because these airy-light tubes taken together do feel like they will tangle us into them, never letting go.

    One of the most important artist to have emerged from Latin American in the second half of the 20th century, Jesús Rafael Soto was concerned with what most visual artists have been obsessed with since we first took to drawing on cave walls, representing the movement in and of life.

    Pondering this artistic obsession, Mari Carmen Ramírez, the Wortham Curator of Latin American Art at the MFAH explained, “The whole question of movement is one that has baffled artist from the beginning of time. It is an essential part of human life. But how do you reproduce that in what is essentially a static medium?” For Soto the solution was to make the viewer a part of the art.

    “Rather than try to portray movement on the canvas, or come up with any kind of mechanical contraption, Soto discovers that the movement is really carried by the viewer,” Ramírez described. “It is the viewer who produces the movement, and the viewer is necessary and becomes an integral part for the artistic proposition. That is a key principle that turns him into one of the leaders in the Kinetic Art Movement and it’s the principle that he’s going to explore in all of the series that make up his work, in different variations.”

    It took 10 years for The Houston Penetrable to come to fruition. The work was commissioned after Soto came to Houston for the opening of the MFAH’s landmark 2004 exhibition, Inverted Utopias: Avant-Garde Art in Latin America. After a few false starts when it was decided to change the piece from an outdoor to an indoor installation, Soto finished the design but died only a few weeks later.

    Besides being Soto’s last work, the Houston Penetrable is one of only a few of his series of Penetrables designed for an indoor environment, and it is the only one that is not monochromatic. A portion of each of the transparent PVC tubes has been hand painted yellow, so that taken together the strands create the image of a yellow ellipse hovering in space.

    Upon entering the Caroline Wiess Law Building, patrons can wander through a small sampling of some of Soto’s earlier work to gain a better understanding of the evolution of his work before heading up the short flight of stairs into Cullinan Hall and diving into the Houston Penetrable.

    After getting a sneak peek at the exhibition a few days before the opening, I find it hard not to use water descriptions. That peek felt more like a sneak swim, and moving into the space felt a little like diving into a sea of dense light. Viewers become swimmers or dancers as soon as they enter, and their movements have to slow down because these airy-light tubes taken together do feel like they will tangle us into them, never letting go.

    It’s also a bit wondrous to stand back and watch other people enter. As they disappear into the yellow horizon its easy to imagine they are fading into the sunset or ascending into the sunrise, depending on your mood. Then, it is time to take the step yourself and merge into the Houston Penetrable.

    Let playtime begin.

    Soto, Houston Penetrable, 2004-14, lacquered aluminum structure, PVC tubes and water-based silkscreen ink.

    1 Soto Houston Penetrable by Tarra May 2014
      
    Photo by Tarra Gaines
    Soto, Houston Penetrable, 2004-14, lacquered aluminum structure, PVC tubes and water-based silkscreen ink.
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    A Roman Holiday (Season)

    All roads lead to Houston museum's blockbuster exhibit of Imperial Rome

    Tarra Gaines
    Jun 11, 2025 | 3:15 pm
    ​The Museum of Fine Arts Houston presents "Art and Life in Imperial Rome: Trajan and His Times"
    Photo courtesy of Museum of Fine Arts, Houston
    The Museum of Fine Arts Houston presents "Art and Life in Imperial Rome: Trajan and His Times" ("Statue of Trajan" Minturno, Italy, 2nd century, marble, National Archaeological Museum, Naples)

    Houston's holiday season will have a distinctly Roman feeling this year, as the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston is bringing the glory of the Gladiator era to Texas. On November 2, 2025 through January 25, 2026 the MFAH presents the monumental new exhibition “Art and Life in Imperial Rome: Trajan and His Times.”

    Featuring 160 objects of antiquity, including marble sculptures, frescoes, mosaics, delicate glass vessels, and exquisite bronze artifacts, the exhibition will transport visitors back in time to the Roman Empire during a flowering of art and architecture. The MFAH partnered with the Saint Louis Art Museum to organize the exhibition, which will showcase many pieces that have never been on view in the U.S.

    While Emperor Trajan might not be the most famous — or in some cases, most infamous — of the Roman emperors, he ruled between 98 and 117 C.E. during the empire’s height and was the second of the so-called “Five Good Emperors” of the Nerva-Antonine dynasty. He was also the first emperor born outside of present-day Italy, in what is now Andalusia, Spain. During his reign, he granted citizenship and rights to some peoples from conquered lands. The exhibition will explore how this time period expanded what it meant to be a Roman and how art reflected Rome’s power and promoted the empire’s values and ideals.

    \u200bThe Museum of Fine Arts Houston presents "Art and Life in Imperial Rome: Trajan and His Times"
      

    Photo courtesy of Museum of Fine Arts, Houston

    The Museum of Fine Arts Houston presents "Art and Life in Imperial Rome: Trajan and His Times" ("Statue of Trajan" Minturno, Italy, 2nd century, marble, National Archaeological Museum, Naples)

    From statues of prominent men and women of the era, including Trajan, to vivid frescoes and furnishing from the villas of Pompeii, the objects in the exhibition will tell fascinating cultural and political stories of life in imperial Rome. To add context to the artworks and objects of antiquity, the MFAH will recreate a section of Trajan’s Column, which was a towering pillar with a spiraling narrative frieze, one of the few monumental sculptures to have survived the fall of Rome.

    “Art and Life in Imperial Rome: Trajan and His Times” brings such a wealth of objects to Houston thanks to unprecedented loans from the renowned antiquities collections of Italian museums including Museo Nazionale Romano, the Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Napoli, the Parco Archeologico di Ostia, and the Musei Vaticani. It would would likely take months of travel across Italy to see this much art.

    “This is truly a rare opportunity for U.S. audiences to experience spectacular objects from this glorious era of the Roman Empire,” said Gary Tinterow, director and Margaret Alkek Williams chair of the MFAH, in a statement. “We are enormously grateful to our colleagues in Rome, Naples, and Vatican City for lending these treasures to us and broadening the appreciation of Italy’s cultural heritage.”

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