Giant Music-Box Sculptures Serenade Downtown Visitors with Holiday Tunes

Edigio Narvaez
Giant Music-Box Sculptures Serenade Downtown Visitors with Holiday Tunes

NOW ON VIEW throughout the Houston Theater District, on the sidewalks surrounding the recently opened Lynn Wyatt Square for the Performing Arts, and in front of such beloved institutions as Jones Hall and the Alley Theatre, is the multi-site installation Harmonies. It’s a series (or “symphony”) of 10 interactive, large-scale music boxes created by LeMonde Studio.


These unique wind-up sculptures include a giant, brightly painted Nutcracker, an electric guitar, a cleverly constructed guitar slide, a stack of old school boomboxes and vintage stereo equipment, a banjo, a violin, a music note, a theater mask, a microphone, and an elegant harp. None of the eco-friendly sculptures require electricity to operate; each sculpture illuminates its surroundings and plays its own unique holiday soundtrack with the simple turn of a crank.

Presented by the Houston Theater District in collaboration with Lynn Wyatt Square, Market Square Park, and Trebly Park, Harmonies is the first activation in a series of initiatives by Houston Theater District — a diverse group of businesses, policy leaders, and arts organizations who perform in the District — to create public spaces for social interaction, cultural exchange, and (let’s be real) selfies and Instagram reels.

Beginning in 2024, the music boxes will shift from playing holiday tunes to music from local arts organizations and artists. Before then, make the trip Downtown and give each one a spin.


Art + Entertainment
Fall Philanthropy Report: Children’s Assessment Center Touts ‘Healing’ for Child Abuse Victims

What is your mission? The Children’s Assessment Center (The CAC) provides healing services to over 6,300 child sexual abuse victims and their families each year. We offer forensic interviewing, family advocacy, mental health services, medical care, and court services at no cost. We facilitate community outreach and prevention training to raise awareness about child abuse in our community and how to keep children safe. Last year, we provided prevention training to over 35,000 community members, including 23,500 children in schools.

Keep Reading Show less

Bill Viola’s ‘Ascension,’ on display as part of ‘Living with the Gods’ at MFAH

THE ARTIST WHO ushered in the expressionist movement in the early 20th century was not, in fact, Picasso or Matisse. It was Paul Gauguin, whose career spanned the decades just preceding the turn of the century. The French painter is the subject of the Museum of Fine Arts’ latest exhibit, Gauguin in the World, which was organized by Henri Loyrette (formerly of the Louvre and the Musée d’Orsay, Paris). The show, just one of the museum’s diverse winter season shows, debuted in Australia in June and will be on display through Feb. 16, 2025, at the MFAH, the only U.S. venue for the survey.

Keep Reading Show less
Art + Entertainment

Cirque du Soleil's 'Echo'


Keep Reading Show less
Art + Entertainment