Local Scene

‘Twas Saturday evening, the sixth of September, when all throughout Houston, social butterflies were aflutter with anticipation for a night to remember. For an event had arrived that happened only once every summer month, the Starbucks Mixed Media Series at the Museum of Fine Arts-Houston. No details were overlooked, not even the location. The Mies-designed Caroline Wiess Law building’s spacious galleries and shaded garden served as the venue for summer’s last hurrah. It was clear that they chose the location with care in the hopes of styling the party with more drama and flair. The twin white tents outside bade elitist pleasure-seekers to enter while beside them, two Gollum statues with maniacal grins guarded the doors.

My sidekicks in their Saturday best and I in my lace nightie had just breezed through the line and entered the vast foyer. Up the stairs was the click and clatter of conversations and heels as people milled around the featured exhibition in the airy mezzanine gallery. Young American scenesters puzzled over the multimedia masterpieces of the Young British Artists, notably including: a giant marble egg slicer, the decay of a dead rabbit over nine weeks, neon-lit knives stabbed through dripping hearts, a whirlwind of steel spun into the suggestion of a human figure, a grotesque diorama portraying the dramedy of hell’s invasion, and more. End Game was the exhibit name and art appreciation facilitated under the influence was the apparent game.

We headed into the “restricted access” room behind the End Game exhibit, transformed from empty galleries and blank walls into a makeshift swanky Miami lounge with multicolored projectors and low couches. Through the back doors, the privileged VIP patrons of the room sauntered into the garden behind the museum while the party pedestrians had to walk outside and around the side of the building to the garden. At the epicenter of Houston’s highbrow culture, college students, artsy hipsters, trendy yuppies and people of all different colors and cliques mixed and mingled under elegant columns and lavish trees. Old classmates I did not expect to see, former coworkers I pretended not to see, acquaintances I spotted in the crowd but avoided, friends I was happy to see, strangers who were happy to see me, all the curfew-free and carefree young had converged to see and be seen.

Leaving behind the deep and serious spectacles of contemporary art inside, the alcohol-enhanced laughing, talking, greeting and flirting sounds of hedonism almost drowned out the guest DJs spinning the 1’s and 2’s in the far corner of the garden. With their eclectic mix of current rhythms and old-school tunes, the DJs (all the way from Canada …) took it from five bold college students commanding the dance floor to a club of gyrating sweaty bodies just before midnight, purses and shoes carelessly discarded on the sidelines. The crowd wildly cheered each familiar song mashed in with the grinding electro and thumping bass. The scene on the lawn was unequivocally a declaration of the Mixed Media Series as the end-all and be-all of summer bashes. Its party identity crisis (from classy art gallery mixer to swanky neon lounge to bustling bar to steamy outdoor club) worked out to the benefit of its local denizens of debauchery. I was disappointed that, unlike past Mixed Media events (which have featured up-and-coming indie bands such as Voxtrot and Glass Candy), the music this time provided the background ambiance rather than dominate as the main attraction. However, pondering the provocative, playful and perturbing End Game exhibit and then dancing barefoot on the museum lawn to nostalgic beats was such a deliciously intoxicating mix that even the worshippers of Dionysus would have envied our fun. So, here’s to a night we felt alive! Thanks, MFAH, for the memories.

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