Untitled Art, Houston director Michael Slenske shares a few of his favorite spots to visit in Space City during the week of the fair, which will open to the public September 19-21.
STAY
Since my first trip to Houston 15 years ago I've been staying at La Colombe d'Or. Back then it was still known as the "Mansion on Montrose." It's this little gem tucked inside a 1923 Montrose Avenue manse that was built for the founder of Humble Oil, and each room is named after artists like Matisse and Picasso, who traded paintings for tabs at the hotel's Provencal namesake. The Zimmerman family have owned and operated the art-filled hotel for near half a century and in that time they've grown their collection to more than 400 works by the likes of Dorothy Hood, Lucas Johnson and Man Ray. The multimedia collection is now installed throughout the property's street-facing sculpture garden, the beloved emerald-hued, Rottet Studios-designed bar and 32 suites that now spread between the original mansion, a residential tower, and a series of uniquely appointed, French Quarter-style bungalows. They've even got works surrounding the 10th floor gym and pool, which has a 270 degree view over the entire city. I swim laps there every morning when I'm in residence.
EAT
There are so many great restaurants opening these past few years, in fact, Michelin just awarded stars to six Houston restaurants, one of which has become my go-to for meetings, Le Jardinier. It's tucked inside the west side of the new Kinder Building at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. I order the Art Lovers Lunch, a three-course breeze through Alain Verzeroli's delightful menu of seasonal French dishes, and try to sit in one of the sage green velvet booths with views onto the Noguchi garden and this incredible tapestry by Houston’s own Trenton Doyle Hancock.
BUY
I was introduced years ago to Kelly and David Hamilton, heirs to one of the country's best custom shirt-making outfits, Hamilton Shirts, which has been in business since 1883. They do plenty of classic cuts, but also some amazing western shirts, especially those designed in collaboration with Lyle Lovett. They also have a long-running collaboration with Todd Snyder, which I played matchmaker on many years back. I'm very into their new chore coats in this durable birdseye cotton, one of which Kelly just fit me for, but my favorite piece is this snap button travel shirt they designed for me with these special pen pockets in this herringbone denim. Out of superstition I wear it every time I take a flight, and it's nearly threadbare after a decade and a lot stamps on my passport, but I'll keep getting it stitched back together until it literally disintegrates. I love that shirt.
VISIT
I’m always interested in the programming of the established galleries in Houston—Sicardi | Ayers | Bacino, Texas Gallery, Moody Gallery, McClain Gallery, Barbara Davis Gallery and Inman Gallery—and make a point to visit them as much as possible, but there's also a lot of new blood in the Houston gallery scene right now.
One of my favorite emerging galleries is Seven Sisters, a year-old space in Fourth Ward focusing on art, craft and design from McClain alum Erin Dorn and ex-banker and military veteran Tom Raith. They were the first local gallery to sign on for Untitled Art, Houston. I also love F, the living room sized gallery space—it’s in the living room—of F Magazine founder Adam Marnie, who just had a great show of non-objective paintings by Houston's Doug Welsh, whose work will be at the fair this year. There's also a new space from Colector, a great upstart gallery from Monterrey, that just opened a project space in Upper Kirby and Laura (the gallery) is another pint-sized space with top programming in Norhill by New York transplant Laura Burton, who started her program after relocating to Houston because her husband, Owen Duffy, got a job as head curator at Asia Society Texas. They're all dynamic new spaces to look out for on the art fair circuit in the coming years. Also look out for BOND Contemporary, which had its inaugural show this summer, and is actually partnering with La Colombe D'or on an installation at the hotel.
OUTLIER
One of my favorite places in Houston right now is Reeves Art & Design, a real cabinet of curiosities that’s been operating for six decades in Montrose. The owner, Matthew Reeves, who took over from his father, has shifted the focus from estate furniture to art and on any given day you might find a show by Houston legends like Mark Flood or David Adickes in the front gallery spaces, while the sprawling archives in the back are filled with secondary market finds—think Margaret Webb Dreyer watercolors or any number of paintings under one of Flood's many aliases—that you can pick through like used vinyl at a record store (and acquire for record almost store-like prices). Though it's billed as "the largest family-owned and operated Houston art gallery" it's also part cutting-edge project space, part Storage Wars fantasy, part head-scratcher and I could stay—and have stayed—in there for hours.
EXPERIENCE
There’s always something interesting happening at POST HTX, which is a futuristic multi-purpose food, art, and entertainment venue that was carved out of the old Barbara Jordan Post Office in downtown Houston by OMA. The rooftop lawn has incredible views of downtown and beneath it you’ll find one of the best food courts I've been to anywhere filled with kiosk-sized starter spaces for many of Houston's most exciting new restaurants of recent memory like Golfstrømmen and ChopnBlok. There’s also a new subterranean night club and experiential museum space called Art Club, which has a sprawling installation by Untitled Art favorite Reynier Leyva Novo, who will have a Special Project at the fair with Sicardi | Ayers | Bacino.
Michael Slenske is an award-winning writer and independent curator based in Los Angeles. For the past 15 years, Slenske has been writing features about the art world and in-depth profiles of artists – from Ed Ruscha and Henry Taylor to Lauren Halsey, Danh Vo and Jimmie Durham – for publications including WSJ, W, Art in America, Interview, Modern Painters, The Hollywood Reporter, LA Times, and New York Magazine. His writing has also appeared in catalogs for Kenny Scharf, Jose Davila, Bari Ziperstein and Abraham Cruzvillegas, among others. In the past decade, Slenske has also curated several notable group and solo exhibitions: at the Paramount Backlot as part of Frieze LA, at the iconic Bradbury Building in collaboration with NeueHouse, and at various galleries including Wilding Cran, Praz-Dellavalade, Nicodim, Jeffrey Deitch, Make Room, Diane Rosenstein and the Landing. He was also a co-curator of the Los Angeles edition of DRIVE-BY-ART, a city-wide, public art exhibition organized alongside Warren Neidich, Renee Petropoulos and Anuradha Vikram in the spring of 2020. Michael will lead the inaugural edition of Untitled Art, Houston, launching in September 2025.