Texans built a new home, and with it, a collection

THE NEW YORK TIMES
Show Us Your Walls
By Hilarie M. Sheets

Bill and Susanne Pritchard with Roy Lichtenstein’s “Brushstroke Head III,” 1987, of painted and patinated bronze, left; Norman Bluhm’s “Untitled,” 1959, in the background; and Cy Twombly’s “Untitled (Gaeta),” 1988, right. Credit Max Burkhalter for The New York Times

HOUSTON---Bill and Susanne Pritchard had long wanted to build a house from the ground up. In 2009, they hired the architect Allan Greenberg to design their dream home in Houston, where they were raising four children, and spent a week in New York scouting galleries for what might go on the walls. They both fell in love with Richard Pousette-Dart’s 1960 abstract canvas “Blue Presence,” with dappled sedimentary layers of soft blue, green, white and sand-toned pigments. It now hangs in the dining room of their grand red brick Federal-style home showcasing Abstract Expressionist paintings by Hans Hofmann, Helen Frankenthaler, Jackson Pollock, Lee Krasner and Joan Mitchell, among newer works. [More]