In your company, are you responsible for booking venues, facilities, restaurants and organizing transportation for meetings and events?
Diversify Your Venue in the Houston Area
Museum of Fine Arts, Houston
The sprawling, multibuilding campus of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (MFAH) offers a variety of unique and elegant spaces—including art galleries, a sculpture garden, house museums and auditoriums—available for private events:
  • The Modernist/Neoclassical Caroline Wiess Law Building served as the first MFAH building and is filled with intimate galleries. The 6,800-square-foot Cullinan Hall with its 30-foot ceilings is the museum’s largest and most flexible space. The gently curved Brown Pavilion Galleries showcase MFAH’s permanent collection of Modern and Contemporary art as well as special traveling exhibitions. The North Foyer serves as the entry area for events in Cullinan Hall and the Brown Pavilion Galleries and also houses a permanent collection of Oceaniac art. Best suited for small cocktail receptions or intimate dinners, the exotic Blaffer and Sterling Galleries display sub-Saharan African art and the Glassell Collection of African Gold. The Brown Auditorium, with fixed lecture-style seats, provides excellent sightlines to the stage and sophisticated audiovisual capabilities ideal for presentations and meetings.
  • The Audrey Jones Beck Building houses MFAH’s collections of antiquities, Old Masters, Impressionism, American, Modern and Contemporary art in a variety of entertaining spaces. Receptions in the ExxonMobil Information Center Lobby look into the stunning 80-foot-high Cullen Foundation Atrium topped with illuminated skylight “boxes” and filled with Greek and Roman antiquities. The Cullen Foundation Plaza porte-cochère provides a covered outdoor event space the entire length of the building that can be combined with the lobby. Janice and Robert C. McNair Gallery showcases land and seascapes by the 19th-century European masters often referred to as the Barbizon School. The six John A. and Audrey Jones Beck Collection Galleries on the second floor feature Impressionistic and Post-Impressionistic pieces by artists like Monet, Cézanne and Caillebotte. The largest of these galleries can accommodate a cocktail reception or an intimate dinner. The Shell Oil Company Foundation Gallery boasts a large window overlooking Downtown Houston and features 19th- and early 20th-century European art, including two sculptures by Auguste Rodin. It can accommodate intimate dinners or be booked with the Beck Collection Gallery as a reception area. The five Sarah Campbell Blaffer Foundation Collection Galleries on the second floor feature Old Master European paintings from the 14th to 16th centuries. The largest of them can host a moderate-size reception or an elegant seated dinner.
  • The Lillie and Hugh Roy Cullen Sculpture Garden showcases many sculptural masterworks of the 19th and 20th centuries that create a unique and tranquil oasis of art and nature for an elegant outdoor cocktail or dinner reception.
  • The beautiful Bayou Bend Collection and Gardens is home to American paintings, furniture and decorative arts on 14 acres of eight formal gardens set among the woods and ravines bordering the estate. Bayou Bend’s gardens and north lawn adjacent to the Diana Fountain are available for outdoor entertaining.
  • The Freed Auditorium, with 135 fixed lecture-style seats, is the classroom lecture hall of the Alfred C. Glassell, Jr. School of Art and offers a variety of audiovisual equipment for meetings and presentations.

Museum of Printing History
With up to 16,000 square feet in three galleries, a kitchen and an auditorium, the Museum of Printing History offers its space for your next event. The museum is available for events of all kinds, including luncheons, dinners and gallery lectures for up to 80; receptions of up to 190; and presentations in the Projection Video Theater for up to 65. Book one of the smaller galleries or the entire museum for your event. The theater has audiovisual equipment for presentations, and the museum offers use of its chairs and tables. Catering is available or you can contact the museum to coordinate outside suppliers.

National Museum of Funeral History
With exhibits of caskets, hearses and famous and historic funerals, the National Museum of Funeral History provides a unique atmosphere for corporate events and parties from the intimate to a fully catered event for hundreds. With more than 20,000 square feet of exhibition space and 10,000 square feet of dining, kitchen and private meeting areas, guests can gather, mingle and enjoy a taste of the bizarre. The museum has a 100-person auditorium with full audiovisual support as well as a private boardroom, classrooms and a business center. The museum also has ample, well-lit parking.

   
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