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    The Story of American Art

    Exhibition of Houston couple's collection tells the story of American art through still-life paintings

    Tarra Gaines
    Jan 19, 2017 | 3:00 pm

    Life stilled on canvas — a vase of flowers, a Bible and half-peeled orange, the inner universe of a seashell — can sometimes tell as much of a story as a king’s portrait or sweeping landscape. And when such painted stories are collected together they might tell an even greater narrative, one of a relationship between a museum and its patrons and public and even the story of American art over 200 years. Such is the case of the recently opened exhibition at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston: Two Centuries of American Still-Life Painting: The Frank and Michelle Hevrdejs Collection.

    While this exhibition will be the first time many of these works by American masters such as Otis Kaye, Georgia O’Keeffe, James Peale, John F. Peto, Max Weber, and Andrew Wyeth have ever been on view to the public, it will not be the last time Houston art lovers will have the opportunity to admire them. Frank and Michelle Hevrdejs have pledged their private, Houston-based collection to the MFAH in honor of his mother, Bernice Hevrdejs.

    The Inside Story

    In a recent preview walk-through, MFAH director Gary Tinterow explained that this exhibition of 68 paintings illustrates the culmination of one behind-the-scenes museum mission that MFAH visitors and members probably have little knowledge of but later reap the benefits.

    “What you don’t see us doing, but it takes up a big part of our lives, is advising collectors in the community, helping them form their collections, nurturing their interests, thereby learning about new areas of art history that might not have otherwise taken our attention,” Tinterow explained. “At the end of what is usually a 20 to 30, sometimes 40 years story, often – if all things go well – there will be a gift to the museum, and the public will then enjoy these works of art.”

    Such was and continues to be the case with Michelle and Frank Hevrdejs, a life trustee and longtime chairman of the Museum’s Collections Committee. Kaylin Weber, assistant curator of American painting and sculpture, and organizing curator of
 the exhibition, explained how the Hevrdejs’ focus on American still-life paintings offers unique insights into the history of American painting as a whole.

    “They have such a passion and knowledge for American art and have created this extraordinary collection that enables us to do something we very rarely get the opportunity to do,” said Weber. “To be able to have this singular focus on still-life painting as a genre and to really show the development, interests and themes over a 200-year period is extraordinary. We really hope that this will bring a story to our audience that they haven’t seen before here in Houston.”

    The collection will eventually be interspersed with the museum’s own vast holdings of American art, and once intermingled, Tinterow also believes the museum “will be able to tell a formidable story that I think no other museum in the country can.”

    Until then, viewing the works in the Hevrdejs Collection side-by-side as one exhibition might also give museum-goers a new perspective on what a still-life painting is and how the form has both radically changed and kept-fast to many traditions over 200 years.

    An Epic American Art History

    The first two galleries will likely seem familiar, even if some of the artists might be unfamiliar. As an audience, we likely have a vision of what still-life paintings are, those arranged everyday inanimate objects, the fruits, flowers, books, candles and even dead animals we understand as the kind of required subjects of still-life. These objects are indeed represented in the first two galleries, as many of the first American artists to attempt still-life painting were influenced by old Dutch masters. However, even these works hold surprises, as the presentation and the playing with light and composition makes each work unique.

    The art in the first few galleries, the works by artists such as Raphaelle Peale, Martin Johnson Heade and William Michael Harnett, also allow visitors to see a tale told through images of American painting changing over the centuries within this one genre.

    In later galleries, we see the rise of American Impressionism and beyond to Abstraction, American Realism into the diversity of very contemporary painting. As they grew their collection, the Hevrdejs widened the focus somewhat to select paintings, like Richard Edward Miller’s The Scarlet Necklace, which had strong still-life elements within other types of genre. And of course, with an artist like Georgia O’Keeffe and her astounding From Pink Shell, there is a kind of exploration into the interior of traditional object of still-life.

    Those beginning gallery subjects —the flowers, fruit and table settings — reappear but in highly different forms.

    “The objects haven’t changed,” Weber explained. “Just the way they’re being painted has changed.” And with this in mind, we might even make a connection through 200 years of time, and within just the space of a few galleries, from the beautiful circles of Raphaelle Peale’s orange peel within Orange and Book (1817) to delicious-looking, playful spirals of Wayne Thiebaud’s Jelly Rolls (2008).

    Each work holds its own beauty but together they also tell a epic tale of American painting.

    “This comprehensive collection of still life painting provides a marvelous insight into the story of American art,” Tinterow said. “Of how it derives from European traditions, how artists in American began to define themselves differently than their European colleagues and began to focus on elements that expressed their own identity and nationality.”

    Two Centuries of American Still-Life Painting: The Frank and Michelle Hevrdejs Collection remains on view through April 9, 2017.

    Richard Edward Miller, The Scarlet Necklace, 1914, oil on canvas, the Frank and Michelle Hevrdejs Collection.

    Two Centuries of American Still-Life Painting: Richard Edward Miller
      
    Courtesy of the Frank and Michelle Hevrdejs Collection
    Richard Edward Miller, The Scarlet Necklace, 1914, oil on canvas, the Frank and Michelle Hevrdejs Collection.
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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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