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Marilyn Oshman
Arts Patron
Marilyn Oshman’s father, Jake, opened the first Oshman’s Sporting Goods store in Houston in 1931, and Marilyn herself was closely involved in the business. But art was always her passion. In the early 1970s as board chair of the Contemporary Arts Museum, she was instrumental in the hiring of director James Harithas, an often provocative former curator at D.C.’s Corcoran Gallery of Art who was a great champion of emerging artists and helped change the face of art in Texas. Since its inception thirty years ago, she has also been among the staunchest supporters of the Orange Show Center for Visionary Art, an entity that preserves such treasures as the Orange Show Monument, the Beer Can House, and the Art Car Museum and Parade, an event that attracts 250,000 people each year. The Orange Show mottoes, “Art for the sake of art” and “Art for everyone,” are the mantras she lives by.