The Beck Collection: A Virtual Tour of the Galleries August 3, 2020
Vincent van Gogh, The Rocks, 1888, oil on canvas, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, gift of Audrey Jones Beck.
Claude Monet, The Japanese Footbridge, Giverny, c. 1922, oil on canvas, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, gift of Audrey Jones Beck.
Audrey Jones Beck and Alfred C. Glassell, Jr. at Beck Building groundbreaking ceremony, January 30, 1997.
Tour the newly reinstalled galleries of the renowned John A. and Audrey Jones Beck Collection from home! This video tour features a special foreword from Gary Tinterow, director of the MFAH. Then European art curator Helga Aurisch and consulting curator Ann Dumas lead the way through a selection of highlights.
From Vincent van Gogh’s The Rocks to Claude Monet’s The Japanese Footbridge, Giverny to Kees van Dongen’s The Corn Poppy, enjoy this private guided tour of favorite masterworks. The Beck Collection galleries are located in the Audrey Jones Beck Building at the MFAH.
The Woman behind the Beck Collection
Audrey Jones Beck was the granddaughter of legendary Houston businessman and philanthropist Jesse Jones. She fell in love with French Impressionism during trips to Paris as a young woman in the 1930s and 40s.
In the 1960s, she had collected “the best she could find of the major artists and turned her attention to lesser-known artists who were equally as talented as the ones that we know better,” author Steven Fenberg noted.
“Like her mentors here in Houston—Ima Hogg, Sarah Campbell Blaffer—she set out to create a collection of art that she loved; that she would eventually give to her community, to her city, to the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.” —Gary Tinterow
