Interview with Gertrude Levy Barnstone, conducted by Sarah C. Reynolds
“draw a circle.”
I was about seven when my mother took me over to the Museum of Fine Arts and talked to Mr. Chillman,
James C. Chillman, Jr., was the founding director of the MFAH, serving from shortly before the William Ward Watkin building opened in 1924 until 1953 and again as interim director between 1959 and 1961.
and he said, “Draw a circle.” And I drew a circle…so he put me in the class. It wasn’t a children’s class. It was an adult class that did oil paintings and nudes and all kinds of good stuff. It was very exciting and alive. A new teacher, Bob Joy, moved down from Pennsylvania to Houston with his family. That was during the depression, and it was all pretty vital and it was very exciting for me. It became my life.
Sun catchers
by Gertrude Barnstone. Installed at U.S. Green Stamp building on Holcomb, 1951. Courtesy of the artist.
In the fifties
When I think of the 50s, I think of a fabulous sense of wonderful things happening, wonderful in terms of energy and hopefulness. The war was over…and so many people were moving here. Howard,
Howard Barnstone graduated from Yale University with a Bachelor’s degree in Architecture in 1948 and moved to Houston that same year. He married Gertrude Levy in 1955; they divorced in 1969. Barnstone practiced and taught architecture in Houston until his death in 1987.
who became my husband, moved to Houston in ’48. The Shamrock was built then, and everything just boomed and exploded…everything was possible and there was so much energy and a positive sense in the air. It was terrific! I was volunteering—a lot of us were doing things. In fact, that’s how Howard and I first got together, because he was a newcomer in Houston, and got involved at CAA. That was, of course, the scene of so much happening—CAA became a good enterprise for the de Menils.
Parisian John de Menil married Dominique Schlumberger in 1931. The de Menils arrived in Houston in 1942 and became US citizens in 1962. Together they amassed one of the largest and most wide-ranging art collections in the United States.
Houston was their—what’s the term?—tabula rasa. There was just this incredible attitude of, wow—let’s go. And to have that with first class art, not pretenders, not second class, but really top notch stuff…their activities and involvement were fabulous.
I had gotten married and was having babies, so I had a studio at home. We turned one room in an apartment, and then a house, into a studio. I was doing a lot of painting and then some sculpture. I had several shows, two or three one person shows…and I remember being thrilled at one of them that Jim Sweeney showed up with Alexander Calder,
Alexander Calder, 1898-1976. American abstract kinetic artist best known for creating mobiles and stabile sculpture.
and that was great fun. He was pretty “in his cups,” but it was a delight.
Gertrude Barnstone, Mexico 1959. Courtesy of the artist.
The burlap group
The burlap group was a lot of Houston artists—not me—who wanted to make the Contemporary Arts Museum, and any art group with a lot of art activity in Houston, exhibit Houston artists. Well, the de Menils wanted—they brought the Van Gogh show—they wanted to do other things that were right up there. But these people objected strongly; they said there should be opportunity for them. They needed venues to show their work and develop. As far as I was concerned, I wasn’t going to learn anything looking at my work, and I knew most of their work from art school. I wanted to see things I wouldn’t otherwise see in Houston, because that’s the only way I was going to be an artist. I don’t know if it was a metaphor for other things, but the idea was that they would, if they could, hang burlap on the walls and hang their art on the burlap.
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Source:
OpenStax, Houston reflections: art in the city, 1950s, 60s and 70s. OpenStax CNX. May 06, 2008 Download for free at http://cnx.org/content/col10526/1.2
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