Exploring Houston’s Museum District with Design*Sponge

Last week, Michael and I were in Houston visiting friends and his younger sister. We were staying about 45 minutes north of the city with them, so one day we decided to drive down town and explore the city’s Museum District. Of course, we went to our go-to resource for city exploring, the Design*Sponge guide to Houston. The new Design*Sponge guides (you can see my guide to Dublin here!) are set up by neighborhood, which is very handy if you only have a limited amount of time. We picked the Museum District, which is also called the Montrose neighborhood in the guide, since we had to be there later in the evening for another event.

We started with a quick and delicious lunch at Canopy, which had the funkiest tables and chairs and really yummy quiche.

Then we zipped over to the Houston Center for Photography. (We drove from spot to spot because we were short on time and because every twenty minutes there was a giant downpour, but if you planned it out you could certainly walk the neighborhood.) The Houston Center for Photography is really bright and currently has an interesting exhibit from Texas artists. It also has an excellent photography library with lots of Texan photography books. I could have stayed for hours!

After a stop at the Houston Art Supply store, where I took no photographs because I was too busy drooling over paints and craft knives and touching every piece of paper and canvas, we drove around the corner to the Houston Center for Contemporary Craft, where we saw an exhibit with works from various artists looking at urban sprawl. Our absolute favorite piece was this blown glass installation where the artist had taken population growth and modeled it in blown glass. It was so interesting to see all of the cities and their population growth patterns in different glass shapes.

There’s a bunch of cool street art along Montrose as well. The only time I was thankful for the torrential rain we had while we were there was in this photograph – I love the reflection in the puddle!

We didn’t go into the Jung Center, but the artwork on the outside walls was inspiring and its mission, to provide pathways to deeper meaning in everyday life, just sounds great. We’d definitely be stopping by some of their events if we lived nearby!

{That’s my darling sister-in-law in the photo above almost touching the artwork. Can’t bring her anywhere!}

Then Michael and I stopped by the Contemporary Art Museum of Houston, only to find that the exhibit was closed because they were changing things over and getting ready for an opening the next evening. So the next night, I grabbed my sister-in-law, Leah, and we acted like Houston big shots at the opening! The exhibit, to commemorate their 65th anniversary, was really well curated and full of color. The opening also involved some seriously hilarious interpretive dance art involving men in tutus and a spelling bee. We played it semi-cool but mostly looked like goofballs inching away from the performances so we didn’t have to get involved.

And back to our Design*Sponge day, Michael and I ended our adventure with a coffee at the cutest coffee shop/wine bar, Agora. It’s a bizarre mix of Greek and Texan decor, but the coffee and treats are so yummy. I had Texas pecan iced coffee and a pumpkin cinnamon roll. I loved it so much, I dragged Leah there the next night for a glass of vino to help us calm down after the hilarious performance art.

Next time we’re in town, we’re going to have to try out the rest of the Houston city guide!