Houston’s Outstanding Museums

By Don Looser, PhD

Located on beautiful South Main Street at Hermann Park, the Museum District consists of 19 museums within a 1.5 mile radius of the spectacular Mecom Fountain. These include the Museum of Fine Arts, the Museum of Natural Science, the Philip Johnson-designed Menil Collection and Mark Rothko Chapel, and the Holocaust Museum. In the summer, it is a wonderful place to stroll through beautiful neighborhoods and Hermann Park.  (Visit http://houmuse.com for a complete guide.)

Other exceptional Houston museums include symphony-founder Ima Hogg’s former residence Bayou Bend on 14 acres of beautiful gardens. The famous Hogg residence houses one of the three finest showcases of American furnishings, silver, ceramics, and paintings in the world. Other fascinating museums include the Houston Children’s Museum, rated #1 in America by Parent’s magazine; the Printing Museum detailing the development of writing from Mesopotamian times, a Renaissance Gallery featuring replicas of Gutenberg press and Bible, and the Hearst Newspaper Gallery; the Dunham Bible Museum with its enveloping exhibits and dioramas of ancient manuscripts, illuminated medieval Scriptures, earliest printed Bibles in English, those printed in America, and Bible translations from across the centuries and around the world; and the National Museum of Funeral History, the largest educational center of funeral customs in the United States with 13 permanent exhibits ranging from ancient Egyptian rituals to the remembrance of celebrities and public figures in contemporary times. This particular museum should be of special interest to church organists.

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