0.7 William camfield, b. 1934  (Page 4/4)

One regret I have is that we looked right away for a new chairman [at Rice] to preside over and lead all of this. John O’Neill didn’t want to continue as chair, and I didn’t want to have the chairmanship of it. Both of us took a whack at it, but we tried to recruit someone new and vital to come in and be a leader and administrator over all of this. We weren’t successful in finding anyone who really caught our imagination and so early on it became a decision to sort of rotate the chairmanship and try to have some sort of even balance between historians and studio people chairing it.

[Also] in the 70s the program at U of H began to develop, particularly in the studio arts. George Bunker came in as chair, I think, in 1974. About that time some new faculty members were coming in—people like Gael Stack, and beginning in the mid-70s with the leadership of Bunker, the University of Houston really developed a significant program in studio arts. The history program over there has always been dominated by the studio department. But U of H was the place to be in the mid-70s. A lot of activity was going on and that included Bill Robinson, who was hired as director of the Blaffer Gallery. He revived the Houston area exhibitions, which I think helped generate some local pride. And at the University of St. Thomas, Earl Staley, who had been at Rice and then let go by John O’Neil as I have already indicated, opened a small but thriving department at the University of St. Thomas and they, too, provided a charge to the city.

In the city at large

It was a boom decade. I mean, people were making money and to go back to the University of St. Thomas, the de Menils had already introduced Philip Johnson to this city as an architect. And in 1974 Pennzoil got to him, and he did the twin towers. It was a symbol of dynamism of the city and the boom years of the city and the Museum of Fine Arts took off. Suddenly the Museum had a real cadre of professional curators, and they began to do more diverse shows, and the purchases began to expand partly because of the boom city. The wonderful families like the Browns, the Cullens, and the Cullinans could do more for the Museum. The collection began to grow. Agee came in and he brought lots of new growth. The Brown Endowment funds came in…Target Stores began to make money available to buy Texas and regional arts and photography, so some major works were acquired. The Museum and Agee were able to do some extraordinary purchases—not just modern, either. He got that fantastic Gothic head. He got the Assyrian relief, and all across the board. So there was a lot going on at the Museum of Fine Arts in the 70s as well. There began to be talk about a “third coast.” Not just East Coast, West Coast, but the Gulf Coast. This is a place to be. We’ve got something unique and vital and original, and some of the established artists began to get more national attention. And there were some exchange shows that got Houston artists out into Philadelphia, Detroit, LA, New York, etc. People began to think, by the late 70s, that something was going to happen here. Why not Houston? And of course, it coincided with the decade in the whole country where New York was challenged. We had moved out of those heydays of the 60s where somewhere we knew where the avant garde was. There seemed to be no direction and New York was faltering, and Europe was staging a comeback and it was up for grabs. Houston had it, you know, and it was no longer New York. It’s going to happen somewhere else and why not here? So a lot of that was going on.

What the future holds

It seems to me that Houston is just on a continuing upward arc in terms of what it offers in the arts. This includes the museums, it includes the educational institutions, it includes the symphony, the opera, the ballet, theater; it includes patronage in the city, it includes the artists and alternative spaces—Houston is just getting richer and richer and more sophisticated.

It seems much more difficult now for someone to be sort of a renaissance woman as Jerry MacAgy was. She was not exactly a one-woman show in town, but she did so much and did it so well. It would be very difficult for someone to do that now. There is just so much more going on. It would be nice to have some sort of charismatic art leader or leaders. I suppose we still have them, but it would be difficult to have one that stood out something like her. Patronage is changing where the grand families, their members have passed on or are quite aged, and in many instances their children have caught the bug and caught commitment to the city. I think that is really admirable. There’s just a lot more people with perhaps not such deep pockets or still more complex interests coming into play, and the government and corporate support is much more prominent now than it was before—much more important.

A couple of other things enrich the whole fabric. One would be the creative writing program at the University of Houston. A former student at the University of St. Thomas, Karl Kilian, had a lot to do with that. He had a good bookstore (Brazos Bookstore). That’s another thing that Houston lacks…we have a few good bookstores, some big ones, but it has been difficult for the writers and book collectors in this city. Thank goodness we have the Detering Book Gallery and Karl Kilian’s as well as some of the other big chains. Another facet would be the role of the city in the arts—the Municipal Art Commission, CACHH. I’ve never been deeply involved in that…there are other people who can do that.

William Camfield was interviewed on August 6, 1997. You can listen to the interview here .