The first art book Amarie Gipson ever bought came from the gift shop at the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston following an exhibit by Trenton Doyle Hancock, one of Houston’s most prominent Black artists. 

She was 18, standing at the edge of a world she didn’t yet know how to enter. “All the questions started flooding me, like, How did this happen? Who’s in charge? …How does something like this come together?” she remembers thinking. “That moment was key.”

Since that first purchase, Gipson has collected more than 800 books depicting Black art, culture, joy, and life—books that anchor her reference library, The Reading Room HTX. Nestled in Downtown’s Sanman Studios, the library is filled with striking volumes focused on Afrofuturism; works by iconic Black artists and authors like Stanley Whitney, Zora Neale Hurston, James Baldwin, and Spike Lee; depictions of the Black Panthers; Houston hip-hop; intricate African hairstyles; Black rodeo culture; Obama portraits; and yes, Beyoncé fans, even the Cowboy Carter art book. Most of them are celebratory images that many of us would never have grown up seeing displayed this way in a physical space. In Texas, it may well be a first.

“At the core of it, it’s Black. It’s Black diasporic. It’s Southern. It’s global South. It’s all that,” she explains, noting the collection leans heavily toward visual art, a medium she’s learned threads through and connects to nearly every other aspect of culture.

An art history graduate from St. Edward’s University, Gipson describes her books as souvenirs and teaching tools, a way to self-educate, particularly given that most art history books she encountered in college offered minimal information about Black art. “It’s like we didn’t even exist until a certain point in history, right?” she says. “And I just knew that couldn’t be the case.” 

Armed with intention and curiosity, Gipson set out to become a curator of Black art, using the internet to fuel her knowledge while also putting herself in environments where she’d feel immersed. She ventured to Miami’s Art Basel during her first semester in college, sneaking into parties and making connections. “I felt like that’s where I [was] supposed to go,” she recalls. She trusted that instinct and later crafted an independent study on strategies for curating exhibitions featuring artists of African descent.

Her work led to internships and fellowships at institutions such as the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, and the Art Institute of Chicago, where she learned the inner workings of museum operations. She worked part-time at the Renaissance Society at the University of Chicago and later helped reopen the Studio Museum in Harlem, New York, digitizing its collection to make it more accessible. Through it all, she kept collecting, sourcing art books from museums, artists, and as many Black-owned bookstores as she could.

When she returned to Houston seven years later, an idea began to take shape. “I wanted to find a place where I could be surrounded by books—Black art books, specifically,” she says. When she realized a place like that didn’t exist, she decided to create it herself.

A DJ on the side, Gipson leaned into her connections to the arts and local community, particularly following her stints at the Baltimore Museum of Art and Houstonia. Using her savings and funds from a major partnership with streaming giant Spotify, she launched The Reading Room online in February 2023, debuting an online catalogue of 325 books from her collection. She continued purchasing titles to fill what she felt were gaps and hosted pop-ups that drew more than 100 people to see the collection in person. “It was truly the happiest that I had ever been,” she says. After residencies at Rice University and with CAMHLab at POST Houston, which ended in February 2024, she opened The Reading Room’s physical home at Sanman in April 2024.* 

Inside, around 380 rotating titles with colorful and deep-hued covers fill shelves and rolling carts organized by topic—art and design, film and photography, history and politics, literature and nonfiction, and culture, including food, music, and sports. There’s even a crate dedicated to Black art books for children. Soothing soulful music hums in the background, while plush couches and a table with wicker chairs invite visitors to linger and flip pages. The space has become an inspiration for creatives, a resource for researchers, and a haven for Black culture enthusiasts, bibliophiles, and anyone in need of a quiet place to work. “It's a library,” Gipson notes. “It’s just culturally specific, young and cool—a place where reading is sexy. It’s fun. It’s colorful. It’s calm. It’s not too overwhelming.”

Online, the website catalogues the entire collection, but The Reading Room extends beyond the shelves. Gipson curates cultural programming inspired by her collection, meaning there’s always a reading list. Titles spark film screenings, readings, listening sessions, workshops, and show-and-tell gatherings, where participants bring photos or artifacts honoring an ancestor to share stories and preserve family history. That, too, is art. In February—around The Reading Room’s third anniversary—she’ll launch Independent Study, a monthly meetup centered on collective reading and research. “I’m committed to our stories,” Gipson says. “I’m committed to the way that we live, who we are, and to making this amazing place where we can feel safe and celebrated no matter what happens.”

Entry and all programs remain free—an intentional choice to “meet people where they are” despite Gipson operating the library off of savings and select grants. “My motivation for creating this space is to provide that sort of access to other people who don’t necessarily have the opportunity to study art history,” she says. “Folks who are curious should be able to come into a space and learn without feeling like there’s some kind of limitation to the access or behavioral expectation.”

Witnessing the intention Gipson has poured into the space has been inspiring for people in the community. Aaliyah Berryman, a sociology undergraduate, started volunteering in November 2025 after attending events at The Reading Room for about a year. With no formal art background, Berryman says her involvement has enlightened her to the multiplicity of Black collaging as an art form for creating narratives, to pleasure as a form of activism, and to the role of collaboration in creating community. “I really just take time to learn and be with others, and that’s really what drew me to the space,” she says. “I continue to learn the more that I’m here.”

Ryan N. Dennis, codirector and chief curator of the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, says it’s been inspiring to see “a younger generation engaged so deeply” in The Reading Room programs, which bend the worlds between Black visual arts and literature. “There’s a need for it in the city,” Dennis says, noting The Reading Room’s ability to resonate locally, particularly with Black Southerners and women, while also carrying a national and global relevance that drives “dialogical engagement.” “We’re always kind of considering the ways in which the styles hold their ground in the geographical location that it’s in, but how does that spread its tentacles in and outward? This is one of those sites that has the ability to do that,” she says.

The Reading Room doesn’t ask much of the viewer, which is part of the appeal. The only requirement has been to “show up as yourself,” Berryman says. It’s fostered an atmosphere where sharing and thinking out loud are encouraged, even if it’s not perfect. Here, no one is expected to be an expert. “I don’t know many other spaces like that,” she says. “This is truly a third space.”

Gipson doesn’t want this to be The Reading Room’s only space, though. She hopes to expand the library’s presence across the city and remove barriers to accessing physical books. One of her long-term goals is to secure more stable funding and eventually launch her own publishing imprint.

Some have questioned whether the library will ever expand to include other cultures, particularly in a diverse city like Houston, but Gipson is firm that focusing on Blackness is essential, not only to disprove the myth that Black people don’t have culture, but also because Blackness itself is vast—deep enough to fill more than one library. For Gipson, The Reading Room hasn’t even scratched the surface.

*Editor's note: This article is updated to include The Reading Room's correct opening date at Sanman Studios and its preceding residencies.

If you go

The Reading Room is open from 11am to 7pm, Wednesday through Sunday. Check out the schedule for special programming on the website.