Photography from The Menil Collection
The Menil Collection presents Photography from The Menil Collection: Curated by Wendy Watriss, a presentation of documentary-style photographs that underscore how images can ignite conversation about diverse social realities. On view December 12, 2025–May 31, 2026, and free of charge, the exhibition features work by Larry Burrows, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Bruce Davidson, Danny Lyon, and Charles Moore, among other significant practitioners in the 20th century who explored varied approaches to capturing unusual moments, from the mundane to the monumental.
“This is an unconventional exhibition. It was done by three sets of eyes: my own and what I know about the vision of the two remarkable people who collected these photographs, John and Dominique de Menil,” Wendy Watriss said. “Being invited by the Menil to create a show from the museum’s photography collection, and the images that John and Dominique began to collect more than fifty years ago, has been a very special gift. It has given me the opportunity to reconnect with their vision and their remarkable way of interacting with art and the world. I hope this exhibition does them justice.”
The photographs on display were selected from the museum’s collection by Watriss, a Houston-based photographer and award-winning photojournalist, and are intended to reflect the strengths of the Menil’s holdings. With her late husband, photographer Fred Baldwin, Watriss cofounded FotoFest, a contemporary arts organization whose biennial, city-wide celebration of international photography, established in 1986, transformed Houston’s cultural landscape, globally elevating the medium’s significance.
When the de Menils, founders of the Menil Collection, began acquiring lens-based work in the late 1960s, photography was still struggling for recognition as a legitimate fine art form. The couple believed the medium’s accessibility offered a deeply humanist perspective on contemporary life. This understanding led them to create the Media Center at Rice University, support Houston’s first academic courses on film and photography, and begin purchasing a small yet powerful group of documentary-style images for their future museum.
In 1976, the Media Center exhibited Watriss and Baldwin’s photographs taken during a two-year period in Grimes County, Texas, part of the state’s old corn and cotton frontier. Influenced by both the de Menils’s commitment to the interrelationship between art and social justice and their own social documentary work in Texas, the couple relocated from New York to Houston. The way the de Menils melded art, in its broadest sense, with human rights was very close to Watriss and Baldwin’s own work and lives.
Photography from The Menil Collection: Curated by Wendy Watriss is presented in celebration of the 40th anniversary of the FotoFest biennial in 2026.
About The Menil Collection
Philanthropists and art patrons John and Dominique de Menil established the Menil Foundation in 1954 to foster greater public understanding and appreciation of art, architecture, culture, religion, and philosophy. In 1987, the Menil Collection’s main building opened to the public.
Today, the Menil Collection consists of a group of art buildings and green spaces located within a residential neighborhood in central Houston. The Menil remains committed to its founders’ belief that art is essential to human experience and welcomes all visitors free of charge.
About Wendy Watriss
Wendy Watriss is an esteemed Houston-based photographer, curator, and photojournalist. She was the first woman to win the World Press Feature Award and the Leica Oskar Barnack Award, for her 1982 photo essay on Agent Orange published in Life.
In the late 1960s, Watriss began her career as a freelance photographer and writer for publications like Newsweek and the New York Times. With her late husband, photographer Fred Baldwin, she co-founded FotoFest. In 1986 the organization hosted its first biyearly city-wide celebration of international photography and transformed Houston’s cultural landscape, elevating the medium’s significance globally. Watriss served as the Artistic Director of FotoFest for 26 years, curating and organizing over sixty international and U.S. exhibitions.
