Scope and Contents Among the top visual arts headlines today: Sotheby’s to offer works by artist Georgia O’Keeffe in a Contemporary Art Evening Auction for the first time; the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam has announced the restoration of Rembrandt’s “The Night Watch” next year, giving the public access to it; the Toledo Museum of Art has acquired two paintings by artists John Anster Fitzgerald (English, 1819-1906) and Dirck Hals (Dutch, 1591-1656); Mark Rothko’s “Untitled (Rust, Blacks on Plum)” to lead Works from...

Scope and Contents On a sunny morning in Houston, Lynn Wyatt descends the staircase of her River Oaks residence, a red brick colonial she has called home for 19 years. “Well, hello there,” she says in her husky Southern drawl. “The phone rang and it was Elton John. I thought I was late.” There’s no need to worry: Wyatt is right on time.Despite casual phone calls from pop stars and her seeming ubiquity at the world’s most glamorous events, Wyatt is, deep down, a homebody. And ever since Hurricane...

Scope and Contents American architecture firm Johnston Marklee has completed a cultural building in Texas, with a white linear form punctured by courtyards.Menil Drawing Institute is the fifth art building to join the Menil Collection's 30-acre (12-hectare) campus in Houston's museum district. Menil Drawing Institute by Johnston MarkleeThe institute showcases modern and contemporary drawings from the private collection of John and Dominique de Menil.Founded in 2008, the...

Scope and Contents Since the grand opening of its Renzo Piano-designed main building in 1987, Houston’s Menil Collection has been described as serene, spiritual, self-effacing. Subsequent enhancements to the Menil campus embodied similar aesthetic qualities: the Cy Twombly Gallery (1995), the Dan Flavin installation in Richmond Hall (1996), and the Byzantine Fresco Chapel (1997).On Saturday, the Menil Drawing Institute, the most significant addition to the Menil campus in decades, will open to the...

Scope and Contents When I was in Houston last week, my brother and I also visited the Rothko Chapel. We found it very emblematic of contemporary spirituality.Mark Rothko (1903-1970) was an abstract artist who was commissioned by Houston art collectors John and Dominique de Menil to create a “meditative space” employing his paintings. The Rothko Chapel was completed in 1971, a year after the artist committed suicide.Described by its website as “a sacred space” open to all, for all...

Scope and Contents When the Menil Drawing Institute opens here on Saturday in a smashing new building, more than a year after a planned debut was abruptly postponed just days before Hurricane Harvey devastated vast swaths of the Bayou City, it will boast a unique distinction. A sophisticated, $40-million facility built specifically for the acquisition, exhibition, study, conservation and storage of modern and contemporary drawings, it is the only place of its kind in the United States.Call it a...

Scope and Contents Post up in the Post OakHouston has plenty of hotels we love, but none quite so over-the-top as the relatively new Post Oak Hotel, where you can charge a Rolls Royce to your room (there's a dealership on-site) and enjoy artwork by Frank Stella, Donald Sultan, and Robert Motherwell without leaving the hotel. If you don't want to spring for the 5,000-square-foot presidential suite (which comes with two bedrooms, a private elevator, gym, 24-hour butler service, and access to the...

Scope and Contents The new Menil Drawing Institute looks like a stealth jet of a building from Richmond Avenue, so sleek and low-slung that passersby might not notice it across the expanse of grass where the Richmont Square Apartments once stood.Architects Sharon Johnston and Mark Lee have delivered a marvel of light, shadow and lines defined by the slant of a razor-thin metal roof and recessed walls of dark gray cedar and glass. In some interior areas, the ceiling is punctuated by deep, diagonal...