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OBSESSIONS. DECORATION. SALIENT FACTS. 25 Candles for Laura Rathe Fine Art A Quest for Gauguin T he year 1999 seems a lifetime ago. The Internet was still in its infancy, with no smartphones or social media; Bill Clinton was in office; 9/11 had not occurred; and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, had just one building, while the Glassell School of Art still held court in its post-modern glass-brick edifice. That was the year Laura Rathe opened her first art gallery on "the docks," a north-downtown warehouse area that was then home to DiverseWorks, where only the avant-garde ventured. Flash forward a quarter century. Rathe has held hundreds of exhibitions to date and maintains two Houston locations — a striking sculptural building along Colquitt's Gallery Row and a River Oaks District space — as well as a Dallas gallery in the heart of the Design District. Today, Laura Rathe Fine Art is not only a designer destination but home to a buzzy stable of 50-some artists, many with national renown. Included are flora Above: Mandy Racine's Al Fresco, 2024, at Laura Rathe Fine Art Paul Gauguin's Three Tahitians, 1899, at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston and fauna painter Hunt Slonem, who also restores America's Gilded Age castles; recent discovery Mandy Racine, a Mallorca-based painter whose confectionary canvases channel Fragonard; the iconic post-painterly abstractionist Gary Komarin; Max Steven Grossman of the photographic "Bookscape" series; Texas talent Lucrecia Waggoner, whose work intersects art and craft; and the paper- and ephemera-obsessed Karen Hawkins, based in Austin. This month, toast the gallery's milestone and bask in recent works by the stars of LRFA's roster in the anniversary exhibition "Twenty Five." Opening Saturday, November 9, 6 to 9 pm, through December 9, at Laura Rathe Fine Art, River Oaks District, 4444 Westheimer, l a u r a r a t h e . c o m . Catherine D. Anspon O n e o f t h e m o s t controversial painters of the late 19th century was Paul Gauguin (1848-1903), who famously renounced bourgeois life in Paris and Copenhagen, abandoned his wife and five children, and decamped to French Polynesia. His trajectory there as a painter changed the course of art history. Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, director Gary Tinterow says in the press statement, "Twentieth-century European and American art would never have developed in the ways that it did were it not for Gauguin … He renewed it by exploring and embracing non-Western art." See the Gauguin show to end all at the MFAH — Houston is the only American venue after its debut at the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra — when "Gauguin in the World" touches down this fall, showcasing more than 150 of the Post-Impressionist's lush paintings, sculptures, and prints, as well as a cache of writings. Former Louvre and Musée d'Orsay director Henri Loyrette curates, coaxing loans from 65 museums and private collections worldwide to seek a new understanding of the artist's creations, removed from his notorious biography, and to ultimately ask: What is Gauguin's legacy today. November 3, 2024 – February 16, 2025, mfah.org. Catherine D. Anspon COLLECTION NATIONAL GALLERIES OF SCOTLAND, EDINBURGH. 22