Photos Of A Legacy

Photos of a Legacy: Amazing exhibit of master works salutes curator's life in photography

If Houston seemed just a little bit more photogenic than usual last week, that might be because by mayoral proclamation June 23 was officially declared Anne Wilkes Tucker Day throughout the city.

In 1976, Tucker was initially hired to establish the department of photography. Now after 39 years at the Museum of Fine Arts, she is set to retire at the end of the month. But the MFAH, collectors, donors, artists and Anne fans didn’t intend to let her go without marking her legacy by partying down.

But the MFAH, collectors, donors, artists and Anne fans didn’t intend to let her go without marking her legacy by partying down.

Yet it’s Houston art lovers who are the ones receiving the best presents in honor of Tucker’s life in photography: the new exhibition In Appreciation: Gifts in Honor of Anne Wilkes Tucker, the coming Anne Wilkes Tucker Photography Study Center, with funds provided by Stanford and Joan Alexander, and the Anne Wilkes Tucker Young Photographers Endowment.

Tucker has been a vital force in building the MFAH photography department practically from scratch, turning the 141 images photographs owned by the museum when she began her tenure into world class and renowned collection of 30,000 works. With the opening of the In Appreciation exhibition her friends, family, admirers and photo-philes all came together to celebrate her accomplishments.

“Anne was global before it was fashionable, universal before anyone wrote about it,” MFAH director Gary Tinterow of Tucker said in announcing the new center. “Anne is a truly great individual, an institution, and most proper institutions require a physical structure, a monument.”

More than 300 guests paid tribute to Tucker and view the new exhibit, which displays selections from the more than 150 works given to the museum in her honor. Among the highlights are a large print of Richard Avedon’s Dovima with Elephants (1955); Nan Goldin’s multimedia Ballad of Sexual Dependency; a unique Man Ray photomontage from around 1926 and a photograph by the medium’s inventor William Henry Fox Talbot from October 1840, which is the earliest firmly dated photograph in the MFAH collection.

During a cocktail reception in Cullinan Hall, where images from Tucker’s tenure were projected onto the walls and guests nibbled on light bites from City Kitchen, Malcolm Daniel, Tucker’s successor, announced the creation of the young photographers endowment in her honor which will be used for the purchase of works by photographers under 40 who are not yet represented in the museum’s collection.

Daniel promised the endowment would help the museum continue in the “spirit of what Anne has done.”

When Tucker took the podium, she did not dwell on her own accomplishments— the over 40 exhibitions she has organized or co-organized, including the recent War/Photography: Images of Armed Conflict and Its Aftermath— but instead spent many minutes thanking the artists and colleagues she worked with for those 39 years.

She also told of some of the “extraordinary experiences” she’s had along the way, like the time in 1985 when her hotel room was bugged when she traveled to communist Czechoslovakia or an exhibition or the curious incident of the late catalog printing caused by an escaped circus elephant storming into the printing bindery.

“On June 30, the hardest thing I will do is turn in my badge,” she concluded. “For 39 years I’ve had the run of this facility, every corner of it at all the hours of day and night. There have been times when I’ve been here 24, 36 hours straight. Now I’m giving up the key to my second home. I’m ready but it will be hard.”

The Tucker badge may be retired but the exhibition runs to Oct. 11, while her influence will likely linger for another 39 years and beyond.

Among those on hand to salute Tucker were Joan and Stanford Alexander, Michael Zilkha, Phoebe and Bobby Tudor, Julie Alexander, Leslie and Brad Bucher, Mariquita Masterson, Hiram Butler, Jereann Chaney, Clare Glassell, Kathy and Marty Goossen, William J. Hill, Jim Malone, Nancy and John Parsley, Sara Morgan, Jeanie Kilroy Wilson and Wallace S. Wilson.

Man Ray, Untitled (Photomontage Portrait of a Young Man), c. 1926, gelatin silver print, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.

MFAH courtesy photo

Man Ray, Untitled (Photomontage Portrait of a Young Man), c. 1926, gelatin silver print, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.

unspecified

Best March Art

9 new art museum and gallery exhibits opening in Houston this month

Ernesto Neto, SunForceOceanLife (installation view), 2020, crocheted textile and plastic balls, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Museum purchase funded by the Caroline Wiess Law Accessions Endowment Fund

As spring returns so does a flowering of biannual, annual, and biennial art festivals and events this month. Art blooms indoors in Houston's favorite museums but also on the city's streets, parks, and even waterways. Lots of immersive art invites viewers to journey into the picture.

The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston gets contemplative, and the Menil Collection displays some rare recent gifts. If that’s not enough art for one month, FotoFest celebrates a big anniversary, and the yearly “Night Light” art party heads downtown.

“Global Visions – FotoFest at 40” programming across Houston (March)
Marking four decades of photographic arts and education programming in Houston, this 2026 FotoFest looks back on key works and themes from the 20 previous biennials between 1986 and 2024. With participating art galleries and museums around the city offering special photography exhibitions over the next several month, FotoFest will feature more than 450 artists from the United States and 58 countries. Curated by FotoFest co-founder and former artistic director Wendy Watriss and FotoFest executive director Steven Evans, with co-curators Annick Dekiouk and Madi Murphy, “Global Visions” will explore some of the previous festival themes including geography, identity, war, ecology, and social change, while also celebrating FotoFest’s global reach and impact. Look for auctions, tours, conversations, art walks, and workshops as part of the programming.

“Buddha/Nature: Five Dialogues on a Shared World” at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (now through May 10)
Ancient and contemporary art converse in this extraordinary new exhibition at the MFAH that explores key teachings of Buddhism centered on how we engage with the natural world. The exhibition is organized crossed five thematically focused galleries, including Samsara, Impermanence, Karma, Compassion, and Awakening. Each gallery features one of five ancient Buddhist sculptures from the Xuzhou Collection, a private collection of Buddhist masterpieces, along with works by international and Texas contemporary artists.

“This exhibition brings ancient Buddhist sculptures into dynamic dialogue with contemporary art,” explains Hao Sheng, consulting curator to the MFAH and organizing curator of the exhibition. “These sacred objects take on new resonance when paired with modern works that explore fundamental questions about existence and harmony. As we witness shifts in our natural environment, we are invited to reflect on the impact of our collective choices in order to achieve a deeper understanding of our place within a changing world.”

“Blooming Wonders: A Celebration of Spring” at Artechouse (now through May 31)
The Houston venue that acts as a greenhouse for art, science, and technology to grow together, Artechouse, brings back this hit exhibition from last year.To explore themes of growth, renewal, and sustainability, “Bloom wonders” showcases several dynamic installations, including “PIXELBLOOM: Timeless Butterflies,” a 270 degrees projection space that puts visitors in the middle of a butterfly cloud. Audiences journey with a flock of butterflies into an immense garden of flowers. In another immersive space, “BloomFall: Through the Infinite” guests enter an mirrored infinity room full of shifting floral dimensions. The installation, “Akousmaflore et Lux” creates a very different type of garden where plants transform into musical instruments. “Clay Pillar” invites visitors to sculpt new forms using clay and a little help from an AI program.

“Ernesto Neto: SunForceOceanLife” at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (now-September 7)
Immersive art gets elevated as the MFAH brings back this commissioned installation that had museum goers walking on air. Looking something like a giant starfish or spiral galaxy from underneath, Ernesto Neto’s singular work floats above almost the entirety of Cullinan Hall in the Caroline Wiess Law Building. One of the largest crochet works to date by Neto, the sculpture consists of yellow, orange, and green materials hand-woven into a myriad of patterns and sewn together in a spiral formation. Visitors can enter this rising labyrinth and wander through different sections filled with soft, plastic balls underfoot that move with each step. Once they reach the center of work, they might pause to view the piece from within the art and reflect on their own journey through “SunForceOceanLife.”

“Ernesto Neto created this site-specific piece as a tribute to the life-giving forces of the sun and the ocean. Inspired by crochet, which he learned from his grandmother, the piece transforms this traditional Brazilian craft into a massive, enveloping structure that engages the body and the mind,” remark Mari Carmen Ramírez, Wortham Curator of Latin American Art on the return of the monumental installation.

True North 2026 along Heights Boulevard (now through December)
Once again, art grows on the Height Boulevard esplanade with this annual outdoor sculpture exhibition sponsored and partnered by the nonprofit Houston Heights Association. The outdoor show features the latest work of some stellar Texas and Houston artists, including Hans Molzberger, Suzette Mouchaty, James D. Phillips, Roger Colombik, Mark Nelson, Robbie Barber, Jim Robertson, Keith Crane/Damon Thomas. Since the artists don’t always install their sculptures on the same days, True North is always an artful excuse to make time for a walk along the boulevard to see what new work has popped up. This beloved tradition is once again thanks to an all-volunteer team, along with the Houston Heights Association in cooperation with the City of Houston Parks and Recreation and Public Works Departments and the Houston Mayor’s Office of Cultural Affairs.

"Rebel Girl" and “The Vanguard” at Houston Center for Photography (March 12-April 12)
Just a few days after International Women’s Day, HCP continues their historic commitment to championing women’s photographic careers as they present two exhibition exploring the complexities of female identity. “Rebel Girl” exhibits the work of Luisa Dörr, Selina Román, and Jo Ann Chaus, artists whose work challenges convention while questioning stereotypes and illuminating the evolving roles and perceptions of women today. For “The Vanguard,” HCP executive director, Anne Leighton Massoni, went through their archives and selected the work of 20 trailblazing women who exhibited at HCP within its first 20 years. Taken together their work illustrate the diversity of women’s artistic visions and creativity.

“The Gift of Drawing: Cy Twombly” at the Menil Collection (March 27-August 9)
Perhaps as a nod to the Menil Collection being the home of the only permanent retrospective exhibition of 20th century pioneering artist, Cy Twombly’s, work, last year the Cy Twombly Foundation made an extraordinary gift of 121 of Twombly’s drawings to the institute. Now art lovers around the world will get to see some of that landmark gift, as the Menil Drawing Institute presents this exhibition featuring 30 of those works. Covering three decades of the artist’s activity, from the 1950s to the 1980s, the show will feature work created by Twombly’s use of a broad range of materials, from graphite to oil paint; techniques such as drawing and collage; and themes that are fundamental to his entire practice, such as classical antiquity, eroticism, and nature. Some highlight of the exhibition will be a series of lush and unrestrained landscapes from 1986 that verge on pure abstraction; two untitled works from 1970 that are related to the artist’s “blackboard paintings” on view in Cy Twombly Gallery; and Narcissus, 1975, a collage of paper, with oil, charcoal, and wax crayon on paper. None of these works have been exhibited in the U.S. before.

“Night Light” at Allen’s Landing at Buffalo Bayou Park (March 28)
The annual free festival of video art along Buffalo Bayou moves west this year from its usual setting along the industrial and residential landscapes of the Buffalo Bayou East trails to Allen’s Landing in downtown Houston. The concrete bridges and underbellies of the major city freeways that emerge from watery bayou depths become the canvases for three site-specific installations from some of Houston most innovative video and multidisciplinary artists. Co-presented by the Aurora Picture Show and Buffalo Bayou Partnership “Night Light” puts the spotlight on new works from artist, designer, and engineer, Corey De’Juan Sherrard Jr.; video, installation, and performance artist and Rice professor, Kenneth Tam; and award winning collaborative duo Hillerbrand+Magsamen. And it wouldn’t be an outdoor Houston event of any kind without food, so expect a lively night artisan market hosted by East End District and BLCK Market at East River featuring local vendors and food trucks plus tunes from DJ Gracie Chavez.

Bayou City Art Festival Downtown at Sam Houston Park (March 28-29)
Downtown Houston continues to sprout art everywhere, as the last weekend in March also heralds the biannual Bayou City Art Fest in Sam Houston Park. Showcasing art from 250 creators from around the country, the festival always brings a wide selection of paintings, prints, jewelry, sculptures, and functional art at all price levels. Fest goers also have the opportunity to meet the art makers and hear the stories behind the art. This year’s featured artists is Lijah Hanley, a digital photographer from Vancouver, WA who first found his place behind a camera lens when he was 13. Along with a day of art, a ticket includes live music all day long on two stages, roaming performers, exciting kids areas with interactive crafts, and culinary arts demonstrations.

$Ernesto Neto, SunForceOceanLife (installation view), 2020, crocheted textile and\nplastic balls, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Museum purchase funded by the\nCaroline Wiess Law Accessions Endowment Fund$