Michael Hardy

1 month ago | museumsassociation.org | Michael Hardy

Web-based app | The Living Museum “Talking” to an Egyptian cat was not something I was expecting to do, but with the speed at which AI is evolving, nothing comes as too much of a surprise anymore. The Living Museum is the brainchild of digital developer Jonathan Talmi, who has created an independent app that – slightly confusingly – is an experimental interface for the British Museum, but isn’t affiliated with the museum. Instead, it uses freely available data.

2 months ago | texasmonthly.com | Michael Hardy

Around a decade ago, Kat and Giles Roberts bought a three-thousand-square-foot house in Clear Lake, the southeast Texas town on Trinity Bay that is best known as the home of NASA’s Johnson Space Center. Until last year, the couple paid between $3,000 and $4,000 annually for home insurance. They didn’t make any claims until last spring, when they had to replace their roof after a hailstorm.

2 months ago | texasmonthly.com | Michael Hardy

On a warm, drizzly morning in August, David Adickes shuffled slowly through his hangar-size studio just northeast of downtown Houston. Leaning on a walker, the artist navigated a labyrinth of half-finished sculptures, cluttered workbenches, and well-used machinery. Towering above it all was a gray, two-story-high concrete bust of President John F. Kennedy—hair carefully chiseled, jaw firm, eyes gazing confidently into the distance.

Jan 17, 2025 | texasmonthly.com | Michael Hardy

Driving through Houston’s Montrose neighborhood, it’s easy to miss the new Hotel Saint Augustine. That’s intentional. The latest boutique property from Bunkhouse Hotels—the Austin brand behind Hotel San José and Hotel Saint Cecilia—is designed to blend seamlessly into the leafy residential neighborhood surrounding the Menil Collection. A single, modest sign marks the hotel’s entrance. The lobby, bar, and restaurant face an interior courtyard and are all but invisible from the street.

Jan 9, 2025 | texasmonthly.com | Michael Hardy |Rose Cahalan

For decades, Texas has been a net-migration state, attracting more residents than we lose. Our booming economy, low cost of living, and warm climate have been drawing transplants since the early nineteenth century, when debtors began leaving the note “GTT” (for “Gone to Texas”) on their abandoned houses. The Census Bureau found that in 2023, more people moved to Texas than to any other state, with the highest numbers coming from California, Florida, and New York (in that order).