Welcome to ArtHouston magazine.
ArtHouston covers all arts disciplines, from performing and visual art to music and film, and is the ultimate resource for connoisseurs, collectors, and art afficionados. In fact, it is the only magazine devoted to the fine art market in Houston.
Houston has a thriving professional arts scene, with professional resident companies in ballet, opera, symphony and theater; only four other U.S. cities can say the same. And the nearby Museum District stakes its claim as the country’s fourth largest, with 20 cultural powerhouses set within blocks of one another. And according to Houston Arts Alliance, Houston has more than 500 arts organizations and 12,000 visual and performing artists in the region.
We are Passionate
As Houston continues to evolve nationally and internationally as a culturally rich city, ArtHouston has become a needed asset and provides residents and visitors with a diverse source of informations covering the wide fields of visual and performing art.
We are passionate and we will strive to be the voice of our vibrant art community.
We want you to enjoy our adventure.
A peek at our publisher
One Man’s Journey to Bring Houston Art and Artists to the World
Imagine, if you will, a Swiss artist in tan cowboy boots. He’s relaxing, for a moment, in a familiar armchair, legs casually crossed, with a Côtes du Rhône in one hand and a Jack Kerouac in the other. His silver hair is almost all white now, the result of years spent mastering his craft and miles traveling to promote it. But it also betrays a youthful spirit, which reveals itself in his animated speech, delivered in English with a syrupy French accent or in the sharp German and Spanish he sometimes fires off like a verbal gunslinger.
His name is John Bernhard. And he’s not relaxing for long. He’s on a mission.
Bernhard is a fine art photographer, mostly, with work in permanent museum collections around the world. He also dabbles in other media and writes. But perhaps most importantly for you, the reader, he has become a vocal advocate for the recognition of his adopted hometown’s fine art scene and the largely incognito and unheralded artists who make it vibrant and compelling. That’s why he started publishing Art Houston. He wants the world to know, to understand, to appreciate.
Houston has been Bernhard’s home since 1980. He came to America from Geneva, a journey recounted in “America’s Call,” his gloves-off and extremely personal, nearly confessional, autobiography. It’s a rare observation of the country and Texas during a very different time in our nation’s history, one in which Bernhard describes Houston as a down-to-earth place with a happy-go-lucky attitude.
According to Bernhard, that laissez-faire zeitgeist of positivity and open-mindedness has declined over the decades. However, Houston’s art scene, like a Newtonian physics reaction, has exploded in the opposite direction, achieving a rarefied stratosphere of imagination, talent and form in which few American cities can fly.
“There aren’t many other cities in the United States, or around the world, that can consistently produce the quality, experimentalism, and breadth of art that is being created in Houston today,” Bernhard says.
“Houston deserves to be in the conversation as one of the top art cities in the world. And I’m determined to get it there.”
We at Art Houston couldn’t agree more. Our city’s rich art story needs to be told. That’s why we’ve come along for the journey. And it’s why we hope you’ll come along, too, by supporting Art Houston and the amazing art scene and artists we hope to capture within these pages.
Shannon Rasberry, Editor-at-Large