The Brooklyn Rail

There is one image that for me sums up the man, Jim Harithas. It is an old black and white photo from 1977 of a protest on the steps of the Houston Police Central Headquarters. Jim joined a crowd gathered there to demonstrate over the brutal murder of a young US Army veteran, Joe Campos Torres, by rogue Houston police officers. His murder and other kinds of brutality and discrimination by the police were all too common in those days. It sparked a seminal time for a rebirth of Chicano rights, for people of color caught in the justice system, and for reforming the Houston police. Though I barely knew Jim, this image, more than the knowledge of all his accomplishments, is what connects me to him.

For those close to Jim, the photo is completely in character of him. He was always known as a man of consciousness with a concern for equality and justice for all. However, fast forward forty-six years, the idea that a museum director would have the time, never mind the courage, to be present at a demonstration is sadly unheard of today. Contemporary executive directors have immense responsibilities to steer institutions with myriad issues surrounding organizing exhibitions, managing staff and budgets, worrying about attendance, finding new sources of revenue, dealing with Boards, etc. Today’s directors have enough on their plate to keep their organizations vital and relevant in an age where institutional size increasingly matters.

For many outside of Texas, he was the renowned director of the Corcoran Gallery (Washington DC), Everson Museum (Syracuse, NY) and the Contemporary Art Museum (Houston). Under his direction, there were the first museum exhibitions showing video art, bio art, and social-political art. But Jim was much more than a head of a museum for Houstonians. He became a collector, benefactor, patron, creator of new arts spaces and alternative museums, he was an occasional artist, and he invented the role of the museum director as social practitioner. He mentored an untold number of protégés across the country and especially Houston. With his, and his wife’s Ann’s, financial support, the Houston and region’s art scene became a completely different landscape, with its own idiosyncratic aesthetic, with a particular focus on the socio-political themes, while bringing attention to the deep regional talent of artists of all backgrounds and ethnicities.

Growing up in Houston in the ’70s and ’80s, I never knew about his impact when I developed the calling to be an artist. It was serendipitous that when I moved to New York City in the ’90s, my mentors happened to be close friends of Jim’s. He had either shown their work, collected or funded their projects, mentored them, or curated exhibitions of their work during his museum direction. When coming back to Houston to visit family I would always make a point of greeting him and sending their regards.

There is one story of Jim’s family life which came to light during his recent memorial. His father, Nicolaus Harithas, before serving in the military during WWII, was a county judge in Maine. Nicolaus was stationed in Germany after WWII and brought all of Jim’s family to live together. It was there that Nicolaus was assigned as one of the judges to the War Crime trials of Nazis in Frankfurt. Jim was raised as a child who loved and appreciated the arts from his mother, and became a young man of deep consciousness with a commitment to social justice from his father.

But how is it that I find connection with a man I hardly knew? Back to the photo of Jim protesting at Police headquarters: a year after the Campos Torres murder, Mexican Americans rose up to angrily demonstrate against the sentencing of the convicted policemen (one year probation and one dollar fine), and the constant police harassment in their neighborhood at an annual Cinco De Mayo celebration. It was during the demonstration that residents were arrested for “rioting” when police broke through the front doors of their homes who just happened to live nearby. It was more police brutality, more discrimination and violation of people’s civil rights. The aftermath of unrest led to several criminal trials where the local District Attorney at the time would change the main charge whenever they saw fit during the trials. It was my father, Henry V., who was the lead attorney for those defendants. Their trials and its appeals to the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals (and subsequent acquittals) resulted in changes to the law that are still established in Texas jurisprudence.

Though we knew many people in common in the art world, I would see Jim only briefly and fleetingly. It makes me wish I could have known about the photo from ’77 (Jim stood below and next to the mother of Joe Campos Torres) before he passed away in March. I wished I knew about his father serving as a war crimes judge in Germany. If we did, we both could have looked at that photo and it may have given us a chance to relate to each other personally outside of the Houston/NY art connections. It would have given us a chance to embody the famous quote by John Adams, that our forefathers practiced the law so that we might become artists.

1. "I must study politics and war that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. My sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history, naval architecture, navigation, commerce and agriculture in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry, and porcelain." John Adams, 2nd U.S. President