We Keep Calling It a Renaissance. Let's Call It Infrastructure.

Every few years a city gets declared the next cultural capital, and every few years the declaration expires.

Houston is in that window now. The music is charting, the food press has arrived, the film slate is real. What's missing is the boring layer: endowments, ownership, venues on long leases, and organizations that survive a founder leaving.

A renaissance is a marketing term. Infrastructure is a balance sheet. The difference between the two decides whether the current moment is remembered or repeated.

The work in front of us is unsexy — acquiring buildings, professionalizing boards, paying administrators — and it is the only work that lasts.