Ann Holmes Fine Arts Archive

Ann Hitchcock Holmes was born on April 25, 1922 in El Paso, TX to Joy and Frederick Holmes. She later moved with her parents and her younger brother, Frederick Keating, to Birmingham, Ala. where she attended high school. The theater scene became an exciting part of Ann’s life at school, inspiring her career plans. After graduation, she attended Whitworth College in Brookhaven, Miss. on a drama scholarship, hoping for a life as an actress and a playwright. After Whitworth, Holmes spent a short time in Birmingham, writing plays, learning the art of painting, and studying sculpture. In 1942, she came to Houston after her grandmother’s death to visit her grandfather and quickly found herself assigned by theater and arts groups to volunteer tasks and working for a newspaper. She was signed on at the Houston Chronicle as a copy kid by City Editor Emmet Walter and was named military editor during the war. In 1947 she became fine arts editor and held that job, as overseeing editor and top critic of the arts in Houston and elsewhere, for four decades.

During those years she witnessed the start up and rise of the Alley Theater, the Houston Ballet, and the Houston Grand Opera. She retired in 1988 to write a book about Houston as arts capital but, almost immediately, her byline returned, this time as Critic at Large, covering architecture and classical dance. While waiting for the critic’s job, she wrote about military, the humanitarian organizations, civic groups, and law cases in the civil and federal courts. But, she also studied music history and theory at Southern College of Fine Arts and later was given a Doctor of Music degree from the school. She received a fellowship in 1953 from the New York Herald Tribune that provided funding and support for a year covering the arts scene in Europe and received a Guggenheim Fellowship for a year of arts visitations in America in 1960. Holmes was a founding member of the American Theater Critics Association in 1974. She has served on numerous boards, including the Houston Municipal Arts Commission, the Fine Arts Advisory Council of University of Texas, The Alliance Francaise Houston, and the Business Fund for the Arts. She is the author of three earlier books and has written articles for numerous publications, such as the New York Times. She won the John G. Flowers award for architectural writing four times and is listed in Who’s Who in America.

Holmes worked part time as Critic at Large until 1999 and died of congestive heart failure in March 2009 at age 86.

Excerpts from "Geo. H. Lewis & Sons obituary."