Get ready for an encounter with history. This fall, one of America’s most heralded decorative arts house museums gets a grand redux that unites the present with the past when Bayou Bend Collection and Gardens, the former home of Houston philanthropist Miss Ima Hogg, unfurls its new contemporary building. At 18,000 square feet, the gleaming two-story, metal-clad structure is silver LEED certified and christened the Lora Jean Kilroy Visitor and Education Center after its lead benefactor, long-time Bayou Bend supporter Houston philanthropist and doyenne of history, Jeanie Kilroy. While the handsome mecca designed by Leslie Elkins — the architect of another well-regarded hometown art destination, the Quaker Friends Live Oak Meeting House that houses the James Turrell skyspace — promises to lure the next generation of cultural tourists, what is also notable is the reinstallation of seven period rooms from the graceful John Staub-designed 1927–1928 home that sits on the museum’s original lush, 14-landscaped acres. The McIntire Bedroom, Washington Hall, Folk Art Room, Metals Study Room, Ceramic Study Room, Federal Parlor and Music Room all boast handsome redos down to new period-style carpeting, woven fresh by the firm Grosvenor Wilton of Kidderminster, England whose pedigree extends back to 1790, and period wallpaper crafted anew by the American firm Alelphi. These restorations give new life to rooms brimming with treasures culled from Bayou Bend’s stellar cache of American decorative and fine art that date from the Colonial period to the mid-Victorian epoch.
The public is invited when the new building and reborn rooms are opened Saturday, September 25, 1 to 5 pm.
mfah.org/bayoubend.
Image: Bayou Bend's Federal Parlor. Photo by Robb Williamson.