Gary Tinterow, the director of the Museum of Fine Arts Houston, sees a critical moment ahead for both his museum and his country.

Early childhood education is cutting back on arts and humanities and political division has rarely been greater in America. Houston’s art museum, which he believes to be a remedy to these ills, is about to complete the final stages of its $450 million campus expansion and redevelopment that will add 500,000 square feet in new construction.

The completion of the redevelopment, which includes three new structures and 400 spaces of underground parking, will be marked by the opening of the Nancy and Rich Kinder Building in late 2020.

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Tinterow grew up in Houston, studied at Harvard University, launched his career at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and came back home to Houston in 2012 to oversee the museum’s campus redevelopment. With an end in sight to the multimillion campus projects, he sees Houston’s premiere museum as more equipped than ever to complete its mission: teaching humanity. He spoke with Texas Inc. about how the city will benefit, both economically and socially, by an expanded cultural institution.

Q: How did spending so much time in Texas inform your work?

A: Well, it made me who I am. I like what I like and know what I know because of Houston, Texas. I remember when the Rothko Chapel opened. I was fascinated by architecture, and thanks to the Menils, bringing Philip Johnson to work here. And then Gerald Hines working with Johnson and distinguished architects. Houston was the city for very fine, sophisticated architecture by great, international architects. We also had great music. All those things that I love today, I experienced growing up in Houston.

The Menils: Houston launched the career of complicated architect Philip Johnson

Q: Were you looking to come back to Houston? Why did you leave the Met?

A: No, never imagined it in my wildest dreams. When I left New York and came to Houston, a lot of my friends were perplexed, because they couldn't understand why I would leave what was an excellent job at the Metropolitan Museum and being in the center of a big media market. Having all the resources at the Metropolitan Museum at my disposal, why would I give that up to come to Houston? What I realized is that Houston has opportunity in a way that New York rarely does. Everything really is bigger here. The skies are wide open, and there's simply more room for people to operate.

Q: You mean physical space?

A: Physical space and mental space. When you're in a town like New York that has all these extraordinary museums with highly talented museum curators and directors working, it's more difficult to navigate and more difficult to find a niche in which to perform. Down here, it's not so crowded, and one has more latitude.

Q: What does that sort of freedom look like for you in particular?

A: We're an extremely nimble museum. We can see an exhibition or the possibility of an exhibition somewhere in the world, and six months later, open it. Our schedules always open for something fantastic that we can offer to our community.

Q: So, Houston is not really known as an art city. Are you working toward that reputation?

A: People who know about museums know about Houston, but in terms of the larger, traveling public, I think our museum has succeeded in the last four or five years of bringing more attention to Houston. It's not by accident that the New York Times or the Wall Street Journal are running, you know, “Top Nine Cities to Visit Next Year,” including Houston, Texas. I think that is a direct result of the extraordinary cultural programming.

Q: Talk about the business community in Houston. Very generous, clearly. Very engaged?

A: I often find that they are eager to engage with us because they come from cities where culture is perhaps a larger part of everyday life, like New York, Philadelphia, Boston, Chicago or LA. When they relocate to Houston, they're happy to see that they can replicate or enhance the life that they knew in their previous home. Here in Houston, we enjoy about 10 percent of our annual fundraising coming from corporate partners. But when I look at the corporate community in Houston, I see many opportunities for corporations to engage with their community through cultural entities.

If Houston didn't have a great quality of life, these corporate headquarters would move somewhere else. We're part of that quality of life, and absolutely essential to the economy. That's what most of the corporate sponsors see is the benefit.

But we're at a critical moment in our nation's history, regarding education. When one looks at the difficulties faced by some of the public school systems, I see that there's so much work to be done. I would very much hope that corporations would want to invest in their community, not only in order to make Houston an attractive place for recruitment, but for all of us to educate the next generation of workers here in Houston.

Q: Can you talk more about that education by the cultural institutions?

A: Museums, above all, teach. They're humbling places. You see so many things that you yourself could never have even imagined, not to mention create. You see things that are so old, and you realize that your place in the history of the planet is a very small one. In the face of all that, I think it's much more difficult to be intolerant with others who are different from you. When you recognize that all these individuals who made these things have experiences that were similar to your own, I think it's very difficult to hold hate.

Museums are critical in teaching tolerance. The fundamental characteristic of civilization is to regulate the extremes of human behavior. So, museums are fundamentally civilizing places.

Q: Do you ever get pushback in terms of corporate sponsorships? Some activists have protested other institutions for taking oil money arguing it conflicts with the intention of the artists displaying their work. Have you ever faced that here in Houston?

A: I've seen myself on Instagram and Twitter as the butt of a bad joke, where political activists are trying to make a point. But, I have enormous respect for the energy industry. Houston is a cultural capital, and that it is largely thanks to the discovery of oil.

Q: Looking back on what you set out to do when you first took the job, how would you evaluate those goals today?

A: I was hired to bring to fruition a construction project. When I arrived here, our Board of Trustees had completed a search for finalists for architects for a new building, and the land had been acquired. Dozens of architects had been considered. And one of the first decisions I had to make along with the Board of Trustees was to hire one of (the architects) and to move that plan forward. Now, it's 80 percent completed.

We built a storage facility, which was not even in the plan. I was able to encourage support while we're building these beautiful new buildings, that we should also take care of the back half of the house, which meant a new storage facility and new conservation facility. Related

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Q: Talk about the long term vision.

A: My long-term goal is a short-term goal, to get to the opening in (late) 2020, for every new Kinder building open with fantastic displays of art, and a fully functioning campus with all the kinks worked out -- where all the parking facilities are working seamlessly, where people can go online and renew their membership easily. I'm very, very preoccupied with the next 18 months.

People who take care of things often have a conservative sensibility, not politically conservative, but they're taking care of things. And so change comes slowly and sometimes awkwardly to museums, as they do to libraries or other institutions that act as custodians. Walking in, you can have all the ideas in the world. But you can’t be a leader unless people follow you. To move forward, you first have to listen.

Q: Can you talk about an example of a negotiation?

A: A museum curator, museum director can conceive of an exhibition. But, if no one comes to it, it's very clear that you've not succeeded in one of the criteria by which an exhibition is measured. Unlike pure scholarship, which has often smaller, but highly influential audiences, museum scholarship has to reach a wider public. So it's often a question of the museum administrators from curators learning how to make their ideas, their own personal passions and their private pursuit of scholarship into something engaging to the larger community. That's often where the rub is.

Q: What else do you want to discuss with regards to your vision for the institution?

A: There are some people who build a new house, and then they live in it for a couple of years, and they sell it and go build another one. For them, the joy is in the building. For me, the joy is going to be in the operating. It's been exhilarating to conceive these buildings and to bring them online. But it's going to be even more enjoyable to live within them. It's the physical visitor experience that I'm focused on the most.