Rienzi

Heads up: this MFAH property is guided tour ONLY. Make an appointment.
I visited on a lazy day, when it was raining and I didn’t have much to do.
A lovely docent, Margaret, took me on a solo hour and a half tour of the home, pointing out the major pieces of art and explaining the history of the art, the home, and the original owners of the home.
Margaret was great — she asked me right up front what I was most interested in, and I told her the art and the home. So she kept the porcelain information light for me, even though they have a major collection and I understand that it’s a major draw for many people to the museum. My tour was just Margaret and I, but I believe they keep all of the tours quite small, which allows the docents to personalize the tours and answer as many questions as you have.
A very interesting and well spent afternoon.

I have lived in Houston 42 years and it took Groupon to let me know about this place. I ended up taking some family out here for a tour (six of us). The exterior is beautiful and we toured the gardens for about 30 minutes before our guided tour inside. The staff were all very nice and definitely knowledgeable about the house and everything inside. I highly recommend this tour if you remotely like museums, art, or antiques. I don’t think this would keep a child’s attention, but my parents, grandparents and I were very impressed.

This was such a gorgeous museum. Our tour guide Barbara was friendly and accommodating and obviously cared a lot about the house. The collection was stunning, and the best part was that it was empty, so it was like having a private tour! This is definitely a must see if you have an hour of free time and want to look at an amazing collection of porcelain and international artwork and décor, all housed in an amazing architectural home.

Just got back from a tour. If you love art history I highly recommend stopping by Rienzi. The 12,000 square foot house and grounds are gorgeous. Owned by the Mastersons, the house contains a beautiful collection of 17^th to 19^th century art. It also doesn’t hurt that it’s located in Riveroaks; a beautiful area of town. My favorites were the Blue Celeste porcelain and the gallery. You could easily spend a few hours here.

If you can’t afford to buy a nice mansion in the River Oaks neighborhood, you can at least experience one by visiting this mansion museum that is decked out with European artworks! Welcome to the Rienzi, a MFAH house museum that was a former mansion owned by the prominent Masterson family.
Donated by the Mastersons, the Rienzi mansion now houses not only the original artworks and furniture but also rotating artworks that stay faithful to the European art theme. Because of its size, all visits must be made through reservations beforehand and guided by a museum staff member. Here, you will find many quality antiques with interesting history and stories explained by the museum guides.
This is an excellent destination for all who are interested in art especially European ones. However, because of the amount of information given in a tour, people who are just casual museum visitors may be bored easily. Nonetheless, whether if you are sure that you are an art lover or unsure if you can handle that much art, make a reservation to experience Rienzi!

Lovers of house museums we are, my partner and I happily descended upon Rienzi in hopes of finding Bayou Bend’s younger sister.
While the land on which Rienzi resides was purchased from Ms. Hogg, the similarities between the two properties does not extend far beyond the homes setting.
I found Rienzi more intimate than Bayou Bend but far less polished. Our docent had a cold and, while cheerful, seemed a bit foggy on the details.
Overall, the Rienzi is a nice look into European art and furnishings all set in a mid-​century Palladian/​Contemporary Houston home of a philanthropic couple. Visit if you enjoy house museums

This mansion is smaller than Bayou Bend, but more accessible in a way. Like Bayou Bend, each room is decorated with furnishings from a specific period (Colonial, Renaissance, Mesozoic, Cretaceous, etc) but the tour actually leads you through each room and you can get up close and personal with the furniture and décor as long as you don’t touch them.
Our docent seemed a little rusty, but she was friendly and had good information, especially if you’re interested in the design details of each room. The best part of the mansion, as mentioned in the other reviews, is the gallery/​ballroom with it’s magnificent paintings, statues, and columns; and where they frequently host cocktail parties, tea services (using the fancy china and tea sets displayed all over the house) and even weddings. Definitely a good place to take your out-​of-​town guests if you want to show them something fancy.

The Museum of Fine Art’s Rienzi Collection contains European decorative arts, primarily china. The collection itself, housed in a beautiful River Oaks mansion on Buffalo Bayou, is spread over several rooms. The expansive ballroom and entrace foyer contain the most impressive floor-​to-​ceiling paintings in the home. In general, the collection is small, and unless you’re a ceramics and china expert, can be seen within 45 minutes. The docents are knowledgeable, but tours/​information of the home can be spotty depending on how talkative the docent is. It’s excellent for events for the MFAH, but I’m unsure if I’d come just to wander the way I do at Bayou Bend.

Tucked away on Kirby is the River Oaks area is the Rienzi. The facility hosts numerous MFAH events along with other art related swaray’s. The grounds and building’s exterior do not reflect what awaits inside. I enjoy smaller private museums. While I prefer to mill about a reflect my own. This is not an option here. Almost all of the displays are unprotected. So you area allowed to be face to face with the items, but you will be accompanied by a very knowledgeable staff member. When your done, you will have a glimpse into the house collection of the Mastersons and perhaps their uncanny obsession with porcelain and miniatures. Along with an impressive art and furniture collection. Check it out.

We attended a tour of this nice house, but we first encountered a very rude security lady by the name of Cheryl Collins. She seemed to be upset from an earlier incident and continued her short and rude attitude with us. Other than that, the tour was very interesting.

My in-​laws along with my husband and I all attended the Rienzi this past weekend. We arrived at 1:15pm only to learn that we couldn’t wait inside the home and had to walk around the garden and outdoor areas, which would have been fine if it weren’t 100+ degrees in Houston (in June). Once we arrived at the home around 1:26pm, we were told the docent was «missing and not picking up her phone.» So, we were a bit disgruntled, but the security guard offered to take us on a «free tour» of the home even though she wasn’t a trained tour guide. We agreed, and about a 10^th of the way through the tour, the docent appeared. Repeated some of what the security guard had said, and she was definitely a bit scattered. I understand their docents are volunteers, but some professionalism should be enforced in any work place or volunteer position.
Nonetheless, the tour was insightful minus all the times when the tour guide had to go through her binder to find answers to our questions. Poor thing, she must have been exhausted.
This was lovely, and perhaps we’ll return at another time with another tour guide to compare the experience. A great benefit of being an MFAh member (Admission was only $ 4).

I’ve often found myself driving around River Oaks, drinking my Starbucks frappuccino, marveling at the beautiful multi-​million dollar mansions and wondering who lives in there and how they got to own such lovely homes. I also like to sometimes envision myself living in one of these homes leading an extravagant life and being fabulous all day long.
When I pulled up to Rienzi I was excited to finally get a glimpse into one of these ritzy houses that I’d only gotten to see from the outside. I was like a kid in a candy store.
My friend and I, who both share a love for arts and humanities even though we both ended up engineers, walked from room to room by jumping from one intricately designed candelabra to a beautifully detailed 6×3 ft painting to an exquisite collection of mocha serving set. I’m pretty sure our most overused phrase was «Look at THIS!»
We didn’t get a guided tour but there were docents in each room ready to provide us with little bits of information about the pieces in the room. I wish I could’ve heard more about the people who owned the house, but I think this tour is highly dependent on who guides you.
If you have any interest in beautiful architecture, European history, beautiful furniture, decorative arts or simply like marveling at the finer things in life, put Rienzi on your list of things to see in Houston.

Quick update, went again with husband and mother in law. The garden has different flowers blooming at different times of the year. This time the fragrance of sweet olive tree was to die for.
The tour… well let’s just say Sylvia was in another league compared to these tour guides. One of the docents we got this time was scared to take over our tour and confessed that she forgot everything she learned at training. Which is fine because she mumbles so much we couldn’t hear anything she was saying anyways. Bless her heart.
I ended up telling my husband everything I learned from Sylvia, the wood inlaid furniture, the family crests, the wanderer pearl painting, family history…

We had family visiting in town and I thought it might be interesting to visit the Rienzi. I’d read a detailed review by David N. on Unilocal and was looking forward to it.
We paid $ 10 for our group and were met by a lovely and thorough tour guide.
My favorite parts of the tour:
The ceiling to floor bookshelves and windows in the library.
The skylights throughout the old and new parts of the house.
And the art gallery/​ballroom with lifesize paintings.
The European artwork/​décor was a little over the top and gawdy for my taste, but I enjoyed the tour and the history of the Masterson family.

In a prior incarnation, I visited Rienzi when it was a private home for the Mastersons and worked parties there — it was a pleasant memory. With Godfather Auntie («GA») in town, my mom called me to bail her out since she was all out of entertainment ideas. She stated that they thought about driving into town to go to the Galleria mall since it should be devoid of people on the weekend after Christmas, right? Wrong.
Having experienced the madness Saturday at 11 AM, I knew that the Death Star Mall would be approaching its fire marshal-​rated occupancy limit. And, let’s not talk about the parking gridlock.
Since I had seen David N’s FTR review, I thought a return trip as a museum patron would kill two birds with one stone. We took GA to the Adickes Sculpturworks Studio, drove by Discovery Green, and walked across the suspension bridge at Bayou Bend.
We ended up being a part of a group tour of 9 persons — on Sundays, no appointment needed but they bundle walk-​ins together as docents are available. Luckily, we were able to pass the 15 minute wait by walking around the expansive grounds. On Sundays, parties of 2 – 4 members pay $ 10 so you can get a price break this way.
Two docents split up the narrative — our first one was a bit rusty on the details and a bit slow in the delivery. Two of our group split off, marched to their Medicare sled (a Cadillac), and pealed out of the lot. [I watched all of this from the window since I wasn’t too interested in the docent’s talk at that point.] The second one was more lively in both facts and pacing, which can account for all remaining members finishing the tour.
Porcelain, paintings, and plates could sum up 80% of the items you’ll see on this tour — and most of it could be described charitably as «fusty». Not my style cup o’ tea but I’m not living there, otherwise, call the «Spice Up My Palladian Pile» producers. I was more interested in the John Staub original architectural design and Neuhaus-​designed expansion. But, your results may vary.
Overall, an interesting study in architecture, a bit of Houston old-​money history, a collection of European bits, and some nice gardens. Add this to the pile of places for touring: worth 30 minutes inside the house and 30 minutes on the grounds. 3.5 stars.

On my recent trip to the Museum of Fine Arts I found that it is not limited to just the two buildings in the museum district. The MFAH also includes Rienzi and Bayou Bend.
Rienzi is open from wed — sat and offers tours at 10 am, 11 am, 1:30 pm, and 2:30 pm. When I arrived I was literally the only person there so I was able to get a private tour for the cost of 4 dollars!!! (for a student, 6 dollars for adults)
I came at 1 pm so I had 30 minutes to kill before the next tour started. I took this time to explore the grounds. There is a beautiful pool out back and marvelous landscaping all around. It was easy to pass the time before the tour.
Rienzi was the home of philanthropists Carroll Sterling Masterson and her husband Harris Masterson III. They donated their home to the MFAH and now it is the center of Houston’s European decorative art.
The whole estate consists of 4.4 acres. And on the tour you are shown the majority of the house. I could go on and on about the contents of this marvel but I’d rather you spend the hour of your time to experience if for yourself.
The only thing I will tell you about the contents is take your time and soak in all the beautiful porcelain; the details are impeccable.