Artist and co-curator Robert Hodge considers collecting, community and the preservation of Houston’s cultural memory.
by Jef Rouner, contributing writer
Closing August 29, 2026 at Houston Museum of African American Culture
At first glance, there’s little rhyme or reason to the Bayou City Stewards: America from Our Perspective exhibition at the Houston Museum of African American Culture (HMAAC). Works by the same artist hang dozens of feet away from each other; paintings and prints sit side by side; and subjects range from evocative portraits to cartoonish crowd scenes. It looks like someone just put up whatever the heck they wanted that looked cool.
That’s exactly what happened, and it’s the core theme of the show. Bayou City Stewards is a unique and frankly genius collection dedicated to the idea that everyday buyers are as important to the preservation of art as the professional collectors and curators.
“They didn’t always understand [the importance of collecting], but they saved and they paid installment plans and they talked to the artist, so they built relationships in a different way,” said Robert Hodge, co-curator of the show. “They just kind of grew their collection. What makes the show special is that it’s from regular people that love art and finding what we could through regular collections.”
Hodge himself is an interesting crossroads of the stewards philosophy. A celebrated artist in his own right, his piece depicting former President Barack Obama alongside Captain America hangs in the show thanks to collector Ed Hamb. However, it’s Hodge’s own collection of other works that takes center stage, particularly from the late polymath Jesse Lott.
Part of it is that Hodge likes Lott (as everyone should; the man might actually have been a literal wizard as well as an artist). Part of it is that Hodge understands the community aspect of art, especially in a place like Houston that has a weak grip on its cultural history sometimes. Even the artists themselves may fail to see the value they produce. Robust, appreciative relationships can fill those gaps.
“I used to share a studio with Robert Pruitt,” said Hodge. “I moved in and they left a lot of things. I asked, hey, can I have this? And he said, sure, because he was going to throw it away.”
Finding that kind of randomized collection of art was no easy task, as co-curator Rachel Simon admits. She’s not a Houstonian herself, having been born in Birmingham, Alabama, and now working mostly in Atlanta, Georgia. The American South shares an identical problem across states, though, when it comes to art from Black artists. Works often lack the same exhibition spaces of their white counterparts, even when they are not actively suppressed. That makes collecting somewhat secretive and insular.
The first task was to win the trust of everyday people. These pieces, bought over the course of a century and often passed down through families, have sentimental value as much as cultural value. Most were receptive, but some took convincing.
“Black Americans can sometimes feel put apart and just kept out of the fine art world or tokenized one way or another,” Simon said in a phone interview, “What Robert and [show producer] India [Lovejoy] have always tried to do is demystify it for people that look like us. The Houston Museum of African American Culture was the perfect platform to do it and to really have the visitors see themselves reflected in their own tastes on the wall.”
When there was reticence to loan the pieces, Hodge and Simon relied on Kathleen Coleman to smooth the way. Coleman is one of the bedrocks of the Houston art scene as a writer, curator, collector, and consultant. She has spent most of her life facilitating the connections between artists and buyers, and she has an encyclopedic knowledge of where pieces have ended up.
“Ultimately, it was the personal relationship between Kathy and these collectors that allowed them to trust us and know that we are going to be as diligent looking over their pieces,” said Simon.
Sadly, extra trust was needed. Just days before the Bayou City Stewards show opened, HMAAC announced that two white men had vandalized a piece by Clarence Heyward hanging in the downstairs gallery. The case is still ongoing with no announced suspects, but Houston sadly has a history of presumably racist attacks on works centered on the Black experience.
The vandalism made people understandably nervous. The whole concept of the show was that art had been safely preserved in the homes of Houstonians. Now, it would be displayed publicly and therefore vulnerable. Luckily, extra security measures and an updated surveillance system have kept things safe, but it’s a reminder of why stewardship is so necessary.
As the show moves towards the end of its run, Hodge and Simon hope that it has taught Houston that cultural curation is more than storage space in a museum basement and carefully displayed exhibitions. It’s about the impact pieces have on the people who buy them and love them enough to keep them.
“When you start collecting art, you understand how when you wake up in the morning your energy, your attitude is better because you’re around these objects that speak your life, speak things that you’re interested and that you support and love and who you are,” said Hodge.
Nothing shows that better than the exhibition’s crowning achievement, the Research Room. Located in the upstairs Bert Long gallery, it’s filled with furniture, desks, and even a simple kitchen table with a pack of dominoes on it. It’s a kind of metaphysical space, a collective Black memory palace where all the art finds a spot because, well, it looks cool.
The Research Room feels lived in, not staged. It has old art catalogues and historical documents strewn about, all dog-eared and well-read. There are prints of album covers and little knickknacks that look like they were a grandmother’s favorite keepsake.
Sitting in the room dissolves the feeling that you’re in a museum at all. It’s a physical space where the heart of art beats, a fractal of how everyday people preserved the works inside their homes for the next generation.
“I think the whole is greater than the sum is greater than the pieces with the Research Room,” said Simon. “My favorite piece in there is a little glass watermelon that my boyfriend’s mom gave me. We put on the dresser next to David C. Driskell’s poster Two Centuries of Black American Art, which we found in the museum archives. Our brains are kind of on the wall up there, but it all came together for me.”
Editor’s Note
Readers can see more from artist Robert Leroy Hodge this fall when his solo exhibition, Frequency, opens September 12 at Redbud Arts Center. It will be on view through October 31, 2026. Details here.
MUSED Houston’s arts writing and expanded editorial coverage are supported in part by the City of Houston through the Houston Arts Alliance.
