I must study politics and war, that my sons may have the liberty to study mathematics and philosophy...and agriculture, in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music...and porcelain.
- John Adams, Letter to Abigail Adams, 1780
When the doors of the first permanent home of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, opened in 1924, the founders had these words carved in granite above the Corinthian columns:
ERECTED BY THE PEOPLE FOR THE USE OF THE PEOPLE
This was no bromide or wishful thinking. It was - and is - the museum's operating philosophy. It was the credo of the museum's first director, James H. Chillman, Jr., an art professor recruited from the faculty of nearby Rice Institute. "This museum of ours," he said, "is for all the people, not to amuse the few of wealth and education, but for those who have little beauty surrounding them in everyday life."
The MFAH has distinguished itself with finding intriguing new ways to bring art to the public - even to Houstonians who have never stepped foot inside the museum's doors.
From its earliest days, the museum's curators, staff and volunteers from the Junior League sought ways to demystify their temple of art and to make it a welcoming place, where people of all ages and all education levels could come and let art work its magic on their lives. Consider:
* During the Depression and up to present times were children's story hours on Saturday mornings.
* The MFAH launched its first film series and broadcast weekly "Look and Listen" shows on KPRC radio in the 1930s.
* Since the mid-1940s, it has welcomed every Houston Independent School District child at a certain grade on field trips.
* Its own television series, "Adventures in Art," vied with Captain Kangaroo and Howdy Dowdy in the 1950s.
* During those Eisenhower years, the museum began putting actual paintings, not reproductions, on "Art Carts" and trundling them off to Houston's Veterans Hospital.
* It began offering classes at M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in 1974 and now provides instruction at eight of Houston's medical institutions.
* In addition to lectures and studio classes at the MFAH's Glassell School, art instructors from the museum teach Houston children with special needs at the Montrose School for the Deaf and other schools throughout Houston.
* More than 150,000 people each year see artworks that the museum loans to libraries in exhibitions that travel throughout Houston and Harris County.
Director Peter C. Marzio
Perhaps not coincidentally, Peter C. Marzio, Ph.D., the museum's director since 1982, wrote his dissertation on The Art Crusade: The Popularization of Fine Arts in America, 1830-1860.In 1993, with the help of the Lila Wallace-Reader's Digest Fund, the MFAH began a five-year effort to create closer ties to the people and institutions - churches, schools, hospitals, community centers and halfway houses - of three ethnically diverse Houston neighborhoods. The museum staff put a banner out front that captured the philosophy of these efforts in five words: A Place For All People.
Marzio said his staff learned much from these efforts to reach out to the people of Houston's Third Ward, the East End and the Near Northwest. It helped "the MFA to understand and value the creativity in these three neighborhoods and to see how passionately murals, quilts, drawings, paintings and sculptures are created and embraced," he said. "I no longer drive by murals, for example, without looking intently at him."The experience "took us out of our ivory towers and helped us to see a world that is challenging and exhilarating," Marzio said.