Travel Tips

Summer is the perfect time to visit your favorite destinations or to explore the good ole USA. If Houston is on your short list of places to visit, we highly recommend these legendary places. Especially if you’re an art lover like ourselves.

BVLGARI: 130 Years of Masterpieces, an exhibition of approximately 150 sizable pieces of jewelry from Bulgari’s Heritage Collection, including masterpieces from the historical archives of the company headquarters in Rome or on loan from private collections. This exclusive retrospective marks the first time the storied jeweler has showcased pieces representing every period since its Roman beginnings in 1884, making BVLGARI: 130 Years of Masterpieces a once-in-a-lifetime event. The exhibition runs through October 5, 2014.  More info: http://bit.ly/bvghmns

Hermann Park celebrates its Centennial in 2014 with a series of public activities, including the addition of the 15-acre McGovern Centennial Gardens and the restoration of the historic Grand Gateway entrance to the heart of the park, both set to open in Fall 2014. Art in the Park is a centennial project designed to bring delight to the more than 6 million annual visitors to the Park by bringing contemporary public art by international artists to the Park throughout 2014 and beyond.  Installations include permanent and loaned works by Trenton Doyle Hancock, Patrick Dougherty, Louise Bourgeois, Sharon Engelstein, Yvonne Domenge, Orly Genger and Ugo Rondinone (to be installed in November 2014).  More info: http://bit.ly/hpc2014

Believing in the spiritual powers of art, John and Dominique de Menil built what has been called one of the finest collections of the modern era. Still growing and housed in a landmark of modern architecture, The Menil Collection is a local treasure and a global destination – an urban oasis open free of charge to all.  This summer, the Menil presents a micro exhibition of works by Charles James in A Thin Wall of Air: Charles James.  Featuring gowns, suits, hats and coats made for Dominique de Menil alongside furniture James designed for the de Menil’s home, the exhibition affords an intimate look into the close working relationship between artist and patron.  More info:  http://bit.ly/menil

Soto Summer at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. Jesús Rafael Soto’s signature Penetrables series is one of the great marvels of contemporary art. The Houston Penetrable—the Venezuelan artist’s final, and most ambitious work—is the only one Soto (1923–2005) designed as permanent or semi-permanent, and one of the few he created as an indoor piece. More info: http://bit.ly/mfahsoto

Currently on view at the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston is an exhibition featuring more than two hundred works of art as well as notebooks, sketchbooks, studies and other artist materials and ephemera from artist Trenton Doyle Hancock. For nearly two decades since his graduation from Temple University, Trenton Doyle Hancock has brought to life a cast of colorful—and often not so colorful—characters through his work. The artist’s use of vivid imagery and mythology has earned him national and international recognition and prompted a fascination with the foundation of his practice. What emerges upon further examination of those foundations is a wide-range of influences including comics, graphic novels, cartoons, music, and film. More info: http://bit.ly/camhhancock