Houston is one of the last big cities in America for me to visit. I've felt somewhat ambivalent about it for many years so for a long time saw no pressing need to travel there. The city appealed when I was young as an American boomtown, all glitzy and new and warm and very different from New York where I grew up. When I was in high school Houston seemed like the place to go and I even applied to Rice University. As I’ve gotten older I came to be somewhat turned off by its reputation – very hot weather, an extreme spread-out geography and auto-based culture, an economy based on a dirty extractive industry, and the tarnish on golden buckle of Sun Belt as its economy went into an oil-bust decline. Much of what I have heard about Houston over the years has generally been quite negative as a place to live. However, I have heard some rather good things about it as a place for short visit with a fair amount to see and do including some very good art museums.

I arrived in the city on Sunday evening to stay for three days at a cheap motel on south side not far from Astrodome and its replacement NRG Stadium, home of the Texas . "How did Houston ever lost the Oilers to Nashville way back when?" I kept thinking as I drove around the old and new stadiums.

I spent my first day in Houston in the southern part of the city around Hermann Park, a large park with Houston’s zoo, gardens, water feature, and a big statue of Sam Houston which is surrounded by many of city’s cultural facilities including its major museums and Rice University. The massive Texas Medical Center, one of the largest complex of hospitals in the world which looks from the distance like an entire skyscraper business district also borders Hermann Park.

One of the museums near the park is the Houston Museum of Natural Science. Although I find science and natural history museums to usually be geared somewhat toward children, I figured I’d check this one out because admission is free. You can quickly tell who funds the museum by the themes of many of its displays. It’s more like a museum of oil and natural gas deposits and extraction, and I doubt they mention anything about human-induced climate change very much.

The Museum of Fine Arts Houston (MFAH) is considered to be one of best and largest encyclopedic art museums in the country, and I must admit to being impressed by it. The place is huge and kept me occupied for almost an entire day with lots African Art and a huge European painting collection with many works by Old Masters and Expressionists that’s on an unusual scale for a newish upstart city like Houston . There were several special exhibitions taking place, but one really excited me. You always hear about French impressionism but rarely of German Impressionism, but this exhibition, “German Impressionist Landscape Painting: Liebermann-Corinth-Slevogt” had some of the best landscape paintings I’ve seen from that country and era.

Houston has a second arts district a mile or so away that includes the Menil Collection and nearby Rothko Chapel. While the Menil Collection houses the private collection of philanthropists John and Dominqiue Menil, they also commissioned a nearby chapel with an interior of paintings by Abstract Expressionist Mark Rothko. Unfortunately, no interior photographs are allowed in either.

On my way out of town I made one last artsy stop on the west side of city near Memorial Park. Bayou Bend was the grand estate home of Ima Hogg, sometimes called the first lady of Texas, which houses the decorative arts part of MFAH collection. Overall I had a very pleasant stay in Houston with good sunny weather and nice temperatures. The museums well exceeded my expectations and at no point was I trapped in on of Houston’s notorious freeway traffic jams.