Here, there and everywhere By JAMES HOWARD GIBBONS

Houston is an international city with residents from every country. In few places is the city's international character embodied and reflected more than at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.

In addition to its extensive collection of European paintings from the Renaissance to the 20th century, the MFAH houses collections from every quarter of the globe: carvings from Pacific islands; collections of gold items from Africa and Indonesia; art from the ancient Americas.

It has devoted a gallery to Korean art, including antiquities that are the world's rarest and thus the most expensive. Their scarcity comes from wave after wave of invaders, who ruthlessly tried to destroy Korean art and civilization.

Befitting the principal art museum in a city fast becoming Latin flavored, the MFAH in 2001 established the International Center for the Arts of the Americas. At a recent exhibit of important Brazilian paintings, museum director Peter Marzio noted that during the last century few people collected Latin American art, so few galleries dealt in it, so few shows were held, so few critics wrote about it, so few students studied it. Under the leadership of Latin American curator Mari Carmen Ramirez, the MFAH is shattering that vicious circle of unappreciative scholarly neglect.

The museum's current exhibits include abstract paintings by Egypt's minister for culture, Farouk Hosni. Accompanying Hosni on his visit to Houston was Egypt's well-regarded secretary general of the Supreme Council of Antiquities, Zahi Hawass, who said he once worked in television in Dallas and Houston.

Across town at the University of Houston, on a smaller scale but no less significant to our thesis, the Blaffer Gallery has hung an exhibit of Houston-area artists. Of the 16 artists in the show, only two were born here, and five are foreign-born:

* Hana Hillerova, Prague, Czech Republic.
* Hedwige Jacobs, a citizen of the Netherlands born in Singapore.
* Lynne McCabe, Glasgow, Scotland.
* Ariane Roesch, Wurzburg, Germany.
* Gabriela Trzebinski, Nairobi, Kenya.
For whatever reason, these artists, working in every imaginable medium, have chosen Houston in which to live and create.

Should that fail to make the point about Houston's international character, the Blaffer Gallery show was curated by Claudia Schmuckli, of Switzerland.

james.gibbons@chron.com

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