Fayez S. Sarofim

HOUSTON, TEXAS–Last summer, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, pulled back the curtain on the collection of a man known foremost for his extraordinary patronage: Fayez S. Sarofim. The Susan and Fayez S. Sarofim Campus at the MFAH is one of the philanthropic marks that the Harvard Business-schooled money manager has made on his adopted hometown. The MFAH exhibition (“Three Centuries of American Art: Antiquities, European, and American Masterpieces — The Fayez S. Sarofim Collection”) conveyed the intellectual breadth, depth, and importance of this vast trove of treasures assembled over six decades. MFAH director Gary Tinterow compares Sarofim to seminal collectors of the past centuries in American art: “William Corcoran in the 19th century, Joseph Hirshhorn in the 20th century, or, more recently, Alice Walton.” The collection encompasses works by George Inness, John Singer Sargent, Burgoyne Diller, and Color Field and Ab-Ex luminaries Helen Frankenthaler, Lee Krasner, Kenneth Noland, and Robert Motherwell.

ART:

El Greco, Joaquín Torres-García, George Inness, Mary Cassatt, Winslow Homer, John Singer Sargent, Childe Hassam, Burgoyne Diller, Edward Hopper, Helen Frankenthaler, Joan Mitchell, Lee Krasner, Kenneth Noland, Robert Motherwell, Jasper Johns, Egyptian pharaonic sculpture, Coptic textiles, ancestral Pueblo pottery, 19th-century Navajo blankets

CV:

Last summer’s MFAH exhibition (“Three Centuries of American Art: Antiquities, European, and American Masterpieces — The Fayez S. Sarofim Collection”) conveyed the importance of this vast trove assembled over six decades. MFAH director Gary Tinterow compares Sarofim to seminal collectors of the past centuries in American art: “William Corcoran in the 19th century, Joseph Hirshhorn in the 20th century, or more recently, Alice Walton.”