Texas Arts Visionary and Maverick Fun Maker Marilyn Oshman Leaves a Giant Legacy With Houston’s Orange Show, Art Car Parade and So Much More

Amidst a party gathering, the news reached us that a Texas art world maverick — the woman who saved one of America’s most singular visionary art sites and helped found Houston’s one-of-a-kind Art Car Parade — Marilyn Oshman had died after a brief illness at age 85.

One of the most transformative presences and personalities in Texas’ visual scene, Oshman will be remembered as a force in the outsider art world who made Houston a HQ for the then nascent collecting field. Decades before the term “outsider” or “visionary” art had a name, let alone its own art fair, Oshman recognized the contributions of mailman Jeff McKissack and saved his monument to the healing properties of a citrus fruit. And that’s how the Orange Show Center for Visionary Art came to be preserved, and why 43 years later, it has not only been kept going but prospered and birthed offspring under its outsider umbrella that include the Houston Art Car Parade, the Beer Can House, Smither Park and the upcoming Bob Wade’s Smokesax, planned for the new Kensinger Plaza along the Brays Bayou Greenways.

PaperCity reached out to those who knew Oshman well — her children and keepers of the Orange Show flame Karen Lubetkin and Andy Lubetkin, her innermost circle of friends and supporters, several of whom enjoyed adventures with Oshman that began more than half a century ago. Here we bring you a great eight who comprise a portrait of this unique, beloved and iconoclastic champion of art in their own words.

John Alexander — Artist

Marilyn the Magnificent: Marilyn Oshman entered my world with the intensity of a tugboat spotlight piercing the fog. We met in 1973 at her home in Meyerland, and hit it off immediately. Her very presence was so exciting, her passion contagious, and her collection astounding. That day started a conversation that continued for over 50 years. She took me under her wing (igniting a firestorm of jealousy among my peers), providing access to places and people in the Houston art scene that I had never dreamed possible. She introduced me to everyone from the mayor down – collectors, curators, museum directors, writers, musicians, and a passel of artists. Her world was alive, busy, and extremely full, and she brought me fully into that world. My life was never the same.

We went to openings, parties, dinners and ceremonies. I saw Etta James, B.B. King, Jerry Lee Lewis, Terry Allen and Little Richard perform in her backyard to raise money for her beloved Orange Show. We would walk over for coffee or tea with her neighbor Dominique de Menil. She casually introduced me to folks like John Chamberlain, Ed Ruscha, Allan Stone, Billy Gibbons, Jim Harithas and Wilfredo Lam. And we travelled the world together – Italy, India, Egypt, Hong Kong, Japan, Indonesia. She was a true adventurer, constantly seeking the next great artist or artwork. I was with her the day she first visited the studios of Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera – a moment that would ignite a passion for Mexican Art within her that led to the building of a truly remarkable collection of Mexican masterpieces.

Great collectors are rare, perhaps more rare than great artists.

Over my life, I watched Marilyn become one of America’s most interesting great art collectors. With an exquisite and authentic eye, Marilyn collected from the heart. Visionary art, Mexican art, Texas art, Buddhist art – her world was filled, not with assets and acquisitions, but spiritual objects, artworks so far removed from the art world’s trendy fashions.

She sought out creative geniuses, artists who were highly original and pushed the envelope – artists who broke the mold. She collected giants like Diego Rivera and Leonora Carrington with the same passion as she did visionary artists like Thornton Dial and Martín Ramirez. And she led the charge in collecting young Houston artists like Bert Long, Sharon Kopriva, James Surls, Charmaine Locke, Mel Chin and myself. She was as fearless and original in her approach to collecting as she was in her life.

Marilyn’s entire life was an adventure. She was always looking for the next meaningful conversation, great performance, or exciting discovery – whether that be a new artist or a great new bakery (the woman loved a good pie). Her life was also defined by generosity. She connected people, freely shared her wisdom and passion, and was fiercely loyal. Scores of artists owe their careers to Marilyn Oshman, myself included. And she had a wicked sense of humor.

My life with Marilyn Oshman was defined by joy, just pure authentic and fearless joy for life. Our times together were always filled with laughter. Her smile could brighten the darkest of days. Perhaps that is what I’ll miss the most.

Sharon Kopriva — Artist, Orange Show Board Member

Those of us so fortunate to have had Marilyn Oshman as a close friend share an enormous loss. As an artist my experiences with her enthusiasm and support began more than 40 years ago and have been forever life-changing. She guided and inspired many of us. Whether working on an Orange Show project or playing mahjongg, Marilyn gave it one hundred percent. She was by Chinese zodiac, a Rabbit (the lucky sign), won often in life and games, and enjoyed both thoroughly.

She was also a Libra and truly had her own since of space and time. A trip around the block with her could easily turn into a daylong adventure and end up somewhere unexpected and become yet another unique and memorable learning experience.

Marilyn was sensuous in every way a person can be. She passed her love and support for the arts onto her children and grandchildren … beautiful, thoughtful, generous and loving. Like so many others, I will miss her greatly.

Barbara Davis — Gallerist

Marilyn was a visionary. She opened the gates for the contemporary art world in Houston.

Karen Lubetkin — Daughter, Orange Show Board Vice President

My mom loved people. She liked to mix people up from different groups. She never hesitated to think that this one wouldn’t get along with this one — and if they didn’t, she knew how to lighten the atmosphere, to connect even the most disparate people. And people loved to be with her because they had fun. She could create a magical environment from nothing.

Her outsider art and visionary art collecting grew out of her love of the raw creativity that ordinary people were doing.

Remembering the galas: Beginning with the early ones, it was always about the music. All the amazing blues artists that she was able to bring to Houston. And at that time, those artists were not considered cool. She saw the beauty in their musical energy and performance, and brought them here. Then there came a time where we couldn’t even afford them anymore, because everybody wanted them — Etta James, Lightnin’ Hopkins.

In 1984 the Neville Brothers came and they played at my wedding. They played the next week at the Orange Show Gala, and at that time, they were just transitioning their name from the Wild Tchoupitoulas — which I’m sure you’ve never heard of — to the Neville Brothers! The whole band played, and they were amazing. Then they came back, I think one or two more times, over the years. And we also had Little Richard. I have a great picture of me and my mom and Little Richard.

All kinds of creative people loved her and were connected. She was super good friends with Billy Gibbons. Frank Zappa loved my Mom and came and visited multiple times and wrote her letters. She was friends with people in Hollywood. Wherever she went, you never knew who you were going to meet or run into with her. When I went to France when I was engaged, it was dinner with (Claude) Lalanne. There were explorations with John Chamberlain, Andy Warhol … I mean, everybody.

Andy Lubetkin — Son, Orange Show Patron

From the early days back at the CAMH, she was known for not wanting Houston institutions to just be a rerun of what showed up in New York. She wanted to dig deep into the Houston art community and find the local talents. That was deeply appreciated, because there were a lot of people who just said, ‘This is what’s hot in New York. So we got to bring that down here.’ She knew that we had artists just as good.

A cool story about my mom is that we had some gangs that were tagging the Oshman warehouse. But you know my mom, she’s going to come up with a solution, so she got together with the head of the gang task force in Houston and created a truce between the gangs. And had the paint donated by, I think, Sherwin-Williams. And the gangs worked alongside each other and painted a 300-foot mural on our warehouse which stood for more than a decade before the building was torn down.

She had an incredible eye for aesthetics — and talent. When she was on the CAMH Board, she identified Jim Harithas as the person that she and the others wanted as director. He had been speaking at a conference. She had for talent going back even that far. Even though she’d never be the sort of revolutionary that he was, she appreciated that and knew that we needed that kind of cutting edge energy at the CAMH.

(See Marilyn Oshman reflect on a famous incident at the CAMH here.)

And I think about the House of the Century. I mean, that building being commissioned by mom in 1972 is mind-blowing.

She had her finger on the pulse of a lot of different things. She did have that eye. She knew when there was something interesting there.

Mark Sullivan — Orange Show Board Member, Past VIPit Art Car Co-Chair

I met Marilyn at a party in the 1980s and was immediately struck by her childlike exuberance. I was just a kid in high school at the time, but her curiosity and humor made her seem like she was on my level despite the age difference. She was a serious art collector and an incredible champion of the arts, of course, but she was also seriously funny with an infectious laugh, and that’s what I will miss the most.

Don Mafrige Jr. — Past Board Orange Show Board Member, Gala Chair and VIPit Art Car Co-Chair

I always found Marilyn to be a rare force of nature that attracted highly talented people (and the mere mortal) to seek out her company and keep coming back for more. She was truly a beacon of light in the Houston Arts Scene. The world will not be the same without her in it.

A favorite memory: On a trip to Marilyn’s house in Idaho I’d planned to pack up wine but Marilyn would rather me bring pancake mix, so I did. Upon arrival in Hope, I insisted in finding my rosé and we did. Marilyn, though not a drinker, was taken by the name Whispering Angel and the pale pink color. I shared my rosé with her the first evening, and let’s just say that we made multiple trips to the wine shop that week. She asked for it as The Angel — until her last days.

Finally, Oshman and her beloved Orange Show’s greatest triumph is that they have expanded McKissack’s vision while still remaining true to the heart of the mission. No institutional vibe here.

Cue the Coming of The Art Guy, Artist Jack Massing, as the Orange Show’s Executive Director

We interviewed Massing last summer when his appointment was first announced. He recounted his history with Oshman, one that not surprisingly went back to this early UH art-school beginnings, when he and his late collaborator Michael Galbreth were in their nascent days as The Art Guys.

Massing told PaperCity via Zoom about how he ended up improbably as the monument’s first ever artist director after quipping: “I’m not an institutional person. But I might need to be institutionalized.”

“It was very organic. And it has to do with my long standing relationship with the Orange Show and with Marilyn, with Andy (Lubetkin), with Karen (Lubetkin) working on the gala, being in the Art Car Parade. I’ve been kind of around the Orange Show, but with big skips in my history here due to being so busy, but I’ve always had the Orange Show in my heart.

“One of the things that I really like is visionary artwork, or outsider artwork — people doing art without an education, making work that they have to make.

“They don’t have any question about what it is. Often times, artists that are in the visionary sphere, they don’t even know why they’re doing it, and they don’t call themselves artists. They just have to do what they did.

“Jeff McKissack falls directly into that. I don’t think he ever called himself an artist. He was just making this monument to the orange, which is so fun and interesting because it works on all the same levels that any educated college professor type Yale graduate art person has. But it’s formulated from a different cauldron of excitement and ingredients.”

What’s Next for Marilyn’s Beloved Monument 

Massing tells PaperCity that McKissack’s monument saved by Oshman’s mission goes on.

“The challenge of developing the campus for the Orange Show with new properties is really exciting, because I can help steer the division of what it’s going to be, and how it’s going to be laid out,”  the artist/Orange Show executive director says. “Reinforce our mission, which is to discover or allow the artist and everyone to make itself known.

That’s basically what the Orange Show stands for, alongside the Beer Can House, Smither Park and now Smokesax which we’re going to erect down on city property along the bayou.”

PaperCity has held a friendship with Oshman and an ongoing role as media sponsor for both Orange Show Gala — year after year, the most raucous bash in Houston’s social history ever — and the vehicular rite of spring, world-famed Houston Art Car Parade. The magazine was able to cover Oshman’s home and its treasure-filled collection in our November 2013 issue. Images of her bold, and nuanced eye, and collecting prowess follow in this slideshow, joined by scenes from past Orange Show Galas, including 2024’s DaliDada bash, Oshman’s last, in which she closed down the dance floor.

Herein, we close with Oshman’s own words, from that 2013 feature: “A Beautiful Testament to the Power of the Outsider: The Intriguingly Curated Interiors of Collector Marilyn Oshman.”

Pivotal moment that propelled you into the art world.

It all started when I was a senior in college in Manhattan, and I ended up in a contemporary arts class with Ivan Karp as my teacher. This was in 1960. Ivan had just become the director of the Leo Castelli Gallery, which was just a block from my dorm. I took the class because a girlfriend of mine that lived in the same apartment building had gotten married, and her in-laws had given the couple a collection of French contemporary art.

I was at Finch College. In this course, Ivan just spun my brain around. I was an English major and a history major, and he was able to tie all of these strange forms, ideas — what came to be iconic images — to the world of literature. He gave us poetry to read that was based on a lot of the same thinking. It started to make this extraordinary sense, just because of the way he taught and the way he thought.

I told him, “I’m going to be your worst student,” because I always picked a fight with him. He always did these counterbalances of different ways to look at the same thing. He was just a fantastic teacher. And years later, he said I was the best student he ever had. But it changed my life. When I moved back to Texas, all of a sudden I was asking people like Meredith Long, “Well, where is the pop art in Houston?” Pop art in Houston in 1961? Forget it. And that’s how it all started.

Other adventures with Ivan Karp, Castelli’s talent scout, the discoverer of Warhol.

He took us to the first art happening that Jim Dine ever had as part of a field trip. I was married when I was a senior in college, so I took Alvin Lubetkin, my husband, to the happening. I could not believe it. I started to really think about it, and it got me. Then when I got back to Houston, ultimately I met up with a woman named Louise Ferrari, a dealer who carried the Surrealists. She had Christo; she would bring these unusual people to town. That was the beginning of my collecting.

First forays into collecting.

I bought some stuff from Louise, and at the same time, I was becoming involved with the Contemporary Arts Museum. I guess I never really thought of myself as a collector until about three or four years ago, when I finally broke down and admitted to it. I looked around and saw that I had a lot of stuff here. I just always thought of the art as adding something really special to my environment.

I never considered the art as investments until they became serious investments, and nobody was more shocked than I was. I always looked at the pieces as: “Are they going to be interesting over time?” And, of course, you never really know until you live with them. And when they “die” on the wall, it means, for me, that they go into storage. So the things that you see here now are things that … have life. And they talk to each other. They can communicate.

On collecting the Texans.

Over the period of time that I was involved with the CAMH, and after we hired James Harithas as the director, my thinking got redirected. I had always looked to New York for what I thought was the happening thing. Right before Jim came to Houston, we began traveling West for the family business (Oshman’s Sporting Goods), and I started meeting some really interesting artists who were working on the West Coast, people like Ed Ruscha, and Wallace Berman. So, I began to buy these works. I really had a collection of East Coast stuff with a European surrealist influence, and then the West Coast works.

When Jim came to the CAMH, he really put out this perspective — and it took me a long time to accept it — that some of the best art is in Houston, or in Texas, and had I really seriously looked at the people who were working right next to me. It really rubbed off on me because I was the president of the CAMH board and worked very closely with him. That’s how I met Orange Show creator Jeff McKissack.

Encounters with the mythic John Alexander and James Surls.

I met John Alexander in the 1970s, saw his work, and it took me four years before I bought any of it — and then I only bought one. He used to tease me, “When are you going to buy something of mine?” And I said, “When I find the right thing.”. . . Surls was more gentlemanly. He never really asked me when I was going to buy something, but I knew he was interested since I bought his best friend’s work. . .

“And then, over time, John and James and I became friends, but it took me a long time to start to collect their work. But now I’m truly a believer. Since then, John introduced me to Ron Hoover and Sharon Kopriva, and then I met Ed Wilson, and he has pieces all over this house.

One of the things that’s important to me is the entry hall. I think it’s really beautiful. And when you look at all of the things that really make it beautiful … there’s the stairwell by Ed Wilson. If you look up at the ceiling, there’s the beautiful work in the dome by James Surls. The works were done for the house, and they are site-specific, and I think incredible. Then hanging on the wall over there is a Paul Kittelson. So that’s three wonderful Houston artists, and they’re here in one room. And these people are available. . . we have such a creative art resource.

To me, all of the pictures have one thing in common, and it’s this essence of something exciting, mysterious, challenging, and protective. I feel better when they’re around; they’re like guardians.

And I really began, over time, to acknowledge the importance of women in the history of art and searched out those that I thought had been underexposed or underserved.

On you and Mr. Orange Show, Jeff McKissack.

The person that introduced me to Jeff McKissack was Jim Harithas in about 1975. He was the director of the CAMH at that time, and I was the chairman of the board. So, in a moment of jest, he said, “I know who the best artist working in Texas is, and you don’t.” He threw it out as a challenge, with a big smile on his face. “Come on, get in the truck and I’ll show you.” I hopped into that truck, and we went out to Munger Street. . . He was right, I really didn’t know. I never would have taken the Tellepsen exit. . . and I just fell in love with the Orange Show when I saw it. I couldn’t believe that this man had dedicated 20 years of his life to building this place.

It was so surreal, because it didn’t look like anything I’d ever seen. But it had a kind of reality because you knew it came straight out of his mind, not out of some magazine or something he had ever seen. It was really everything that was inside of him.

On palling around with Mr. McKissack.

I went to see him all the time. The CAMH had a lot of out-of-town visitors; I formed a connection by taking everybody to see the Orange Show, because I thought it was so moving.

On keeping McKissack’s life’s work going.

It occurred to me that when he died that somebody had to do something. In his papers, he left the Orange Show to his nephew. When they found a note by McKissack, it said “Call Marilyn … She’ll know what to do.”

How the hell did he know? I didn’t have the first idea what to do [with the Orange Show]; I only knew that I was going to do something, and I was going to try. He must have known I would try. And that’s what I’ve doing all these years, since he died in 1980.

On circus remembrances and childhood enchantment.

When I grew up, we lived right over on Holcombe. There was a gravel road, which ran alongside the bayou and at the end was a house that belonged to one of the Ringling Brothers. All of these animals were there, and all of these beautiful cars and paintings, and those are some really early memories of mine. At one point there was a fire, and almost all of the animals died, and, of course, they moved from there, but they left two stone elephants, which my sister and I bought years later when the property was being sold. I have always thought that my fascination with things that are real but that have some kind of magic, were linked to that experience. I got that same feeling when I went to see the Orange Show. In a way, it was the greatest curse, because it’s become my third child.

On the Orange Show and Dominique de Menil.

When I began to discuss the Orange Show, I actually met with Dominique de Menil. In the early ’80s, I had started doing some trips with her, and she was one of the original donors to the Orange Show, as was Nina Cullinan … Twenty-one people each gave $500; we raised $10,500 … Dominique told me how important the Orange Show was, and that, whatever happened in the future, I should never let it be seen as a children’s work of art. She felt that it was a mature work of art; that it deserved to be supported, and it deserved to live. That really made a difference. Some of the first donors were ZZ Top, which was not that surprising. They loved it, and they used to come out there all the time. The first artist that came there was Willem de Kooning; he’s the one that called it the best art in the state of Texas. I took Frank Zappa there … oh my gosh, people from everywhere.

On the demeanor and character of Mr. McKissack.

He was a Southern gentleman. He had these steely blue eyes, and when he spoke, he looked you right in the eye. Courtly, clean-cut, and with a beautiful smile. When he talked about the Orange Show, he would tell you about every one of the materials, and then he would give you a history of where he got them, how he got them, and how he transported them back. He really wanted people to know about how he did it. He was a single man, close to 80 when he died. He never married. He never had children. The Orange Show was his child.

A memorial service for Marilyn Oshman will be held at Congregation Emanu El, 1500 Sunset this Thursday, January 9 at noon. In lieu of flowers donations may be sent to the Marilyn Oshman Orange Show Endowment at the Orange Show Foundation here.