IV. The More Things Change . . .

A lot of what we know about The Center’s founding is documented in the master’s thesis Kevin T. Baker wrote for the SMU graduate program in finance. Kevin is a local banker who has been a center volunteer and occasional performer with the music theater.  In his thesis he examined the planning and funding developed by Brazosport Fine Arts Council as a case study in how a nonprofit community group can accomplish its immediate goals and provide a foundation for future operations as well.

The original dreams that resulted in the Brazosport Center for the Arts and Sciences grew from the desire of citizens “to develop a more cultural atmosphere.” They were drivers of change. They organized the Brazosport Fine Arts Council in 1964 to “coordinate, encourage and assist the function and activities of the various existing cultural groups within the Brazosport Area and, where there are or may be vacancies of Cultural Groups…, it shall be the duty and object of the Brazosport Fine Arts Council to promote and/or sponsor… cultural organizations, activities or functions.” (Kevin T. Baker thesis, p. 5)

Within the decade that followed, the Council saw the need for a facility to provide a home for the arts. They responded by planning and building the Center for the Arts and Sciences. It opened in 1976. (Baker thesis, p. 20) They could not predict the future. They could only look at the data and try to understand trends and statistical projections. They were imprecise tools at best.

But there was one thing they knew to be true. They knew it to be timeless and universal. It would serve as one of their guiding lights. In a community built around industry, the hard sciences and engineering there must be a balance with music, theater, and other performing and visual arts. They provide the foundation in the humanities to guides us as we work together for the betterment of our children, our country and our world.

It was beautifully and powerfully expressed by the chorus in The Pirates of Penzance, presented by Brazosport Center Stages in 1991: For what, we ask, is life / without a touch of Poetry in it?

In the era of those dreamers who built The Center for the Arts and Sciences in the early 1970s, no one questioned the value of the arts in the life of the community and for the lives of the young people we would bring up under The Center’s influence. The arts were a necessary complement to the sciences on which they had built an economy. They were also at the foundation of our humanity and life in our community—a touch of poetry. They were aware that Houston offered a host of arts venues and opportunities — fifty-five miles away on a dark two-lane highway.