In October 1977, William Martin wrote in Texas Monthly that the Orange Show, a folk art site on Munger Street in southeast Houston, was the passion of its creator, Jeff McKissack, then 75. McKissack told William Martin in a Texas Monthly interview, “I work on it every day.” The complex, built from salvaged materials, honours oranges, which McKissack saw as symbols of strength, purity and the American way. McKissack opened the show to the public in 1979, and it is now a pilgrimage destination for folk art lovers worldwide. This article traces its creation, collection, recognition and preservation.
How did McKissack build the Orange Show
McKissack built the show largely from salvaged and bought items. Some came from buildings demolished in downtown Houston during his years at the Post Office. They included roof tiles from the old Capitol Theatre, a railing from a Stowers Furniture Company fire escape and a miniature obelisk from the Texas State Hotel. Other pieces came from antique and junk shops between Houston and Hot Springs, Arkansas, where McKissack had holidayed since 1918. Cast-iron tractor seats and dozens of buggy wheels were his most successful finds, and they served as seating and as decoration on gates, fences and partitions.The exhibits described included a steamboat display, a steam buggy and an exhibit room roughly eight feet wide and twenty feet long. The room held mannequin scenes, a tepee and signs with McKissack’s own wording. McKissack told Martin he had at least $10,000 worth of further exhibits stored in his living room. He also said that he had worked on the project since 1968: “I started working on it in 1968, and I work on it every day.“
PC: Texas Monthly interview
Why did Harithas support the Orange Show
James Harithas, director of the Contemporary Arts Museum, first visited the Orange Show in 1975 and became an enthusiastic supporter. Harithas said he took visitors to see it, among them the painter Willem de Kooning and the collector Count Panza, and called it the “Orange Shrine”. His visits were interrupted when the Bicentennial flood destroyed the museum in June 1976.Harithas told Martin he doubted the show would bring McKissack substantial income unless it was sold as a work of art to a collector who would maintain it. He estimated it could fetch a few hundred thousand dollars. If no sale came about, he felt the city should take it over as a monument, and he said he intended to put the museum behind it. McKissack’s own hope was for 100,000 to 300,000 visitors a year. Neighbourhood boys had broken in shortly before his last visit, pouring paint over the exhibit room and damaging exhibits. McKissack told him he had scolded the boys but had not told their parents.
How large was the Orange Show
According to the Texas Historical Foundation, a grant presentation to the Orange Show Foundation on 27 June 2023. Working as a postal worker by day and an artist by night. By the time he opened the show to the public more than twenty years later, it said, he had assembled salvaged materials into 3,000 square feet of sculptural environment. It states that he opened it in 1979 and that it survived less than a year afterwards.The grant came from its William Jack Sibley Arts Endowment. It supports ongoing efforts to restore and maintain the site, whose oldest parts are approaching 70 years old. The foundation said the piecemeal nature of the original work makes maintenance complex, requiring fidelity to both aesthetic and structural integrity. It described the Orange Show as a pilgrimage destination for lovers of folk art around the world.
