VISUAL ARTS + MUSEUMS

Rienzi Center for European Decorative Arts, MFAH presents Monthly Gallery Talks. Rienzi highlights special works in the estate’s collection at these monthly talks – March 17, April 21 and May 19. Enjoy an early afternoon or an after-lunch escape to the MFAH’s Rienzi for a Gallery Talk on the third Thursday of each month this spring.

Thursday, May 19, 2011 - Tea Caddy, Sugar Basket and Fitted Case, Daniel Smith and Robert Sharp, London, 1765.

Misty Flores, former Sterling-Turner Curatorial Fellow for Rienzi, will discuss a remarkable set of George III silver. The silver tea “equipage,” as well as its accompanying sharkskin box, would have been a very refined addition to an 18th-century tea table.

Rienzi is the center for European decorative arts at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. Comprising a remarkable art collection, and a house and gardens, Rienzi was given to the museum by arts patrons Carroll Sterling Masterson and Harris Masterson III. This handsome residence is named for Mr. Masterson's grandfather, Rienzi Johnston, and is situated on 4.4 acres in Houston's River Oaks neighborhood. The structure was designed in 1952 by John F. Staub, the same architect who designed Bayou Bend.