"I literally learned the business by osmosis," Clint Willour told the Houston Chronicle,in a piece about him. "I wasn't an artist. I didn't know diddly. But Iwould go to New York and hang around Tibor and learn a lot. And heentrusted the gallery to me."

Willour is a major, lifelong donor to the Houston Museum of Fine Arts; Rebecca S. Cohen, an art critic for the Austin Chronicle, calls him "the unsung hero of Texas art."

The Tibor he references is, of course, "well-known New York art dealer Tibor de Nagy," says the Houston Chronicle.De Nagy co-owned a gallery in Houston with a dealer named MarvinWatson, who, the paper says, "knew two things about Willour: that hehad an eye for art and that he could manage a million-dollar business."

But Willour, according to the Chronicle,is an unlikely figure in the art world. "Wending his way through thefashionable crowd in his mismatched outfit, bifocals and sturdy blackRockports," the paper says, "Willour looks out of place — less like anart personage than like the nice old man next door, the one you ask tofeed your dog and pick up the mail when you're on vacation."

Despitekindly appearances, over his long career, Willour has slowly given themuseum a collection worth "about a million dollars." He is "among themuseum's most important benefactors, with 976 photographs, prints,drawings, paintings and sculptures to his name," the paper notes.

"He didn't inherit money and, in his entire life, he's never made more than $40,000 a year," says the Chronicle."But what Willour lacks in money, he makes up for with hisextraordinary eye for art, an eye that drew him to Richard Misrach andDiane Arbus when he could buy their photographs for peanuts."

"IfI had waited until this year and suddenly donated my entire collectionof a thousand artworks to the museum, there would be a big pressrelease," Willour told the Chronicle. "It would be a majorthing. But I've done it over 25 years — 30, 40, 50 works a year. It'snever great headlines. It's never big news. And I prefer it that way."

Rebecca S. Cohen, an art critic for the Austin Chronicle and author of Art Guide Texas, is a long-time friend of Clint.

"I think Clint has done more for mid-career artists, and art institutions in the state, than anyone else in Texas," she said.

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Houston Chronicle: "Big Donor, Small Budget"