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W e don't know if it's retail Monopoly or hopscotch, but let the games begin! It looks like someone is putting a hotel on Buffalo Speedway; two new showrooms are taking over Post Oak Boulevard and two design boutiques are trading spaces. Here's all the Buzz. Few hotels conjure such arrhythmia as the name Auberge. And Houston is about to get its first: The Birdsall, named after the fabulous architect Birdsall Briscoe who, along with John Staub, architecturally shaped River Oaks in the 1920s through the '50s. The 105-room boutique hotel and residential high-rise, along with a private members club, is being developed within The RO, Transwestern Development's 17-acre district at 3120 Buffalo Speedway. Both The Birdsall, Auberge Resorts Collection, and The Birdsall Residences are projected to be completed by the end of 2026. Within the last three years, five Auberge Resorts Collections have been built or are in development in Texas: Commodore Perry Estate, which opened in Austin in 2020; Bowie House, which opened in Fort Worth in December; The Knox in Dallas, slated to open in 2026, and now The Birdsall … Kohler, a powerhouse in kitchen and bath products, opens its first Signature Store in Texas, in Houston on Post Oak Boulevard in the former Meredith O'Donnell showroom space (Meredith O'Donnell moved months ago to Old Katy Road). The 4,038-square- Retail Monopoly The Altar of Wiley foot Kohler Signature Store showcases Kohler, Kallista, and Robern bath and kitchen fixtures, as well as tile, stone, and ceramics from Ann Sacks (a Kohler company). Open to both design professionals and homeowners, the showroom has bath collection suites with functioning showers and faucets, 11 vanity vignettes, and four bathroom ensembles … A few doors down, BSH Experience & Design Center opens its first Texas showroom on Post Oak Boulevard in the former Zadok Jewelers space (Zadok has opened in a new Post Oak location), carrying Bosch, Thermador, and Gaggenau home appliances. With 14,847 square feet and fully built-out live kitchen vignettes, BSH is open to both design professionals and homeowners. Scheduled opening is early this year … You'd know that blue-and-white check anywhere. Hästens Beds, the world's most luxurious handmade mattresses, opens shop in River Oaks District two doors down from Steak 48, in mid- February … Mecox home design shop, which left its West University spot after a fire in the neighboring building, has been camping out at 2025 West Alabama, with plans to open the new store at 2304 Bissonnet in the former Shabby Slips location around February 1. Shabby Slips' Renea Abbott has opened her new store at 3465 West Alabama, in the former Nancy Littlejohn Fine Art space. See page 38 for the full story. The Birdsall and The Birdsall Residences, Houston's first Auberge Resorts Collection F o r s h e e r d r a m a , ambition, and global pedigree, it's hard to match "Kehinde Wiley: An Archaeology of Silence" at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (through May 27). Few museums could undertake the bravura scale of the 26 artworks mounted here: life-sized figurative paintings and the heroic, multi-ton bronze that gives the exhibition its title. Kudos to MFAH director Gary Tinterow for securing Wiley's tour de force — among the most talked-about installations at the 2022 Venice Biennale — for Texas audiences. Houston is the second stop of the exhibition's national tour, begun at its organizing institution, the Fine Arts Museums, San Francisco. Wiley forges fresh elegies and monuments that command our attention. His magnum opus was birthed in studio in Dakar, Senegal, during the pandemic using studio assistants, artists from his Black Rock residency program, and friends in this series that contemplates the tragic trilogy of COVID-19, George Floyd's murder at police hands, and the outcry of the Black Lives Matter movement. The artist says of "An Archeology of Silence" — which is installed at the Beck Building, in darkened galleries that evoke a chapel — "In this work, I decided to move in the direction of the fallen, the language of the broken. You'll see images of fallen angels. You'll see images of dead soldiers … This show has to do with the notion of the magical, the transformative. The work contains a kind of magical realism that posits the ugly truth but also a beautiful and flawed future." mfah.org. Catherine D. Anspon COURTESY THE ARTIST AND GALERIE TEMPLON. © 2022 KEHINDE WILEY. Kehinde Wiley's Reclining Nude (Babacar Mané), 2022, at MFAH 12