Word: houstons
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...scientists in Zurich. Their find: a metallic ceramic compound that became a superconductor at a temperature well above the previously achieved record of 23.2 Kelvin, or -418 degrees F. By year's end researchers were developing materials that became superconductors at higher and higher temperatures. At the University of Houston, a team led by Paul C.W. Chu set the currently recognized standard last February, when it produced superconductivity at a balmy 98 K (-283 degrees...
...this year, at least three American private collections have gone public, with their own buildings and curatorial staff. One, the Menil Collection in Houston, is a triumph. The others, the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington (based on a collection put together by Wilhelmina and Wallace Holladay) and the Terra Museum of American Art in Chicago, are rather less than that...
Well, yes and no. There is always room for a really fine museum, and the proof is in Houston. The Menil Collection, which opened in June, houses the works assembled over the past 45 years by Dominique de Menil and her late husband John, who was chairman of Schlumberger, the giant oil-field services company. Through the '70s, as American museum and collecting habits became encysted with hoopla, glitz and architectural manipulation, Dominique de Menil remained absolutely committed to the ideal of art as art, of a museum whose discretion and neutrality would release the eloquence of the work...
...outside with wide-board gray swamp cypress in a white steel frame. Inside, there are black-stained pine floors, and curved concrete louvers that admit a changing wash of daylight through most of the roof. It is plain and delicate, and it sits in its frame-house district of Houston with a perfect sense of context -- which is no surprise, since the Menil Foundation owns most of the houses around it, all of which have been painted the same warm gray. (Gray is to Dominique de Menil's cultural activities what orange is to Hare Krishnas.) Unexpressive, inviting, distanced...
...overlooked America's forgotten railways as an alternative to crowded highways. Tens of thousands of miles of underutilized railroads could be transformed into medium- to high-speed transportation networks, particularly in the Northeast, Midwest and Sunbelt. Similarly, the great railway capillary systems of cities like Houston, Los Angeles and Detroit, which were once used extensively for freight delivery, could be developed into useful commuter routes...