Oklahoma City National Memorial On April 19, 1995, Oklahoma City became the site of the largest domestic terrorist incident in United States history, when anti-government fanatic Timothy McVeigh bombed the Alfred Murah Federal Building downtown. The blast killed 139 people, an eighth of them children at a day care center. Events six and a half years later pushed this one to a footnote in public consciousness, but the hole in the city’s fabric still aches. This morning I went and paid my respects. The memorial is built on top of the actual building site and street. Like most recent memorials, the sculpture is quite minimalist. This type of memorial i... read more

Texas does not have a high reputation for art museums. Even for western art, the best known public collections are elsewhere. That probably accounts for how few people know that the state has a group of great museums in an unexpected place, Fort Worth. The city holds something called the Cultural District, with has five museums within ten blocks of each other. Three of them are art museums. Remarkably, each one focuses on different subjects, so they have no overlap. Equally remarkably, each one has a building from a notable architect. Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth I saw the Modern Art Museum first. It’s contained in a steel and concrete masterpiece from Tadao Ando, surrounded by a reflecting pool. Interior rooms have the white wall look de... read more

Dallas has the misfortune of being known by most people as the place where two famous people were shot. JR Ewing, thankfully, was only a character on the TV series Dallas. President John F Kennedy, on the other hand, was tragically a real person. His assassination has long fed the conspiracy gristmill. The only place to separate the reality from the rumors, to the extent it can be, is here in Dallas. Sixth Floor Museum The Sixth Floor Museum has the most extensive information on the assassination. It’s located on (and named after) the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Deposi... read more

Johnson Space Center I began today at one of Houston’s most popular tourist site, the Johnson Space Center. Its world famous as the place that directs all American manned space flights. All Apollo radio messages started with a reference to Houston (including the infamous one from Apollo 13 listed in the blog title). The center requires a drive, because it exists on the very edge of the city proper. Civilians get funneled to a large parking lot outside a white, vaguely futuristic building labeled Space Center Houston. Inside contains three things: a museum on the manned space program, a space themed url=http://... read more

Houston Museum of Fine Arts Today, I dove into the Houston art scene, starting at the Houston Museum of Fine Arts. It consists of two modernist buildings across the street from each other. Since this is Houston, that ‘street’ was four lanes wide. To prevent people getting killed, the museum built a tunnel between the buildings. It holds one of the museum’s most remarkable artworks, The Light Inside from Texas artist James Turell. He builds installations that manipulate the viewer’s perception of light. Walking through the tunnel, it looks like a long blue narrow tube, through a pink area of indefinite size. Careful close up study shows that the actual corridor is shaped like an oval. Pink lights on the curved walls create the light field, and two st... read more