The Menil Collection

Pink, yellow, green, and blue hues alternate among almost 250 fluorescent lamps in the largest of Dan Flavin's three site-specific installations in the Menil Collection's Richmond Hall. The building—formerly a grocery store, a series of bars, and a dance hall—houses Dominique de Menil's final commission.

Visit the Dan Flavin Installation, located at the southernmost edge of the Menil's campus. Admission is always free.

Join us at the Menil Collection and enjoy upcoming programs in June.

✏️ Inprint Writing Workout, Sat., June 6, 11 a.m.–1 p.m. This workshop has reached capacity. There will be a stand-by line onsite.
🎵 DACAMERA Stop, Look, and Listen!, Sat., June 20, 3–4 p.m.
🎤 Member Noontime Talk: "John Akomfrah: The Hour Of The Dog" with Michelle White, Fri., June 26, 12–12:30 p.m.
📽️ Film Screening: "Hairy Who & The Chicago Imagists", Fri., June 26, 7–8:45 p.m.

The Menil's public programs are always free and open to all.

To attend special member events, join at menil.org/membership.

Photojournalist Larry Burrows' centennial is tomorrow. See a selection of Burrows's images of the Vietnam War, on view in "Photography from The Menil Collection: Curated by Wendy Watriss."

Among Burrows's best-known photographs is "Reaching Out (Operation Prairie, Mutter Ridge, Nui Cay Tri), Vietnam," 1966, which shows a wounded U.S. Marine Gunnery Sergeant Jeremiah Purdie approaching an injured Lance Corporal Roger Dale Treadway. The image "has served as the most indelible, searing illustration of the horrors inherent in that long, divisive war and, by implication, in all wars," wrote Ben Cosgrove in "LIFE Magazine."

Burrows spent nine years covering the war, until his death in 1971, when the helicopter carrying him and fellow photojournalists was shot down in Laos.

There's always a place for you at the Menil Collection.

Across the museum's four art buildings and green spaces, take your time while unplugging, exploring the art, and enjoying the neighborhood. Admission is always free.

Spend some time with "Middle Passage," 1970, by Frank Bowling, on view in the Menil Collection's modern and contemporary galleries.

As the artist began experimenting with paint, he moved canvases off the easel. "They all start on the floor of my studio," Bowling said, "and I flood the canvas with this thin color." This painting is among the works resulting from this process and features layers of bright paint and stenciled maps and letters.

Screen-printed photographs of Bowling's sons and mother are visible in the work held by the Menil. "I named the painting 'Middle Passage' because I am a product of the middle passage. I do not bring my images together because of the history and brutality of that terrible crossing, but rather in spite of it."

In the Menil Collection's modern and contemporary galleries, find Jasper Johns' work "Voice," 1964/1967. The painting was the final acquisition made by John de Menil before his death.

Look closely—the painting is made of two canvases, and the word "VOICE" is visible just underneath the lath affixed at the base of a downward arc. "The wire and slat measure space in relation to the artist's body, with the sweeping motion recalling both his own presence and the Vitruvian Man's ideal proportions," wrote Kelly Montana, Associate Curator, Menil Drawing Institute, when the painting was included in the Menil's 30th anniversary exhibition.

Reaching over 25 feet into the air and nearly 32 feet across, "Bygones," 1976, has been installed in Menil Park since the museum opened in 1987.

For the two I-beam girders and rectangular plate, Mark di Suvero chose to use weathered steel, which gradually develops a protective patina when exposed to Houston's climate. Dynamic yet poised, monumental in scale yet elegant in proportion, "Bygones" embodies di Suvero's command of materials, engineering, and geometry.

Menil Park and the museum's green spaces are open daily, dawn to dusk.