Hugh R. Butt, M.D.

On February 15, 1996, a gala event entitled A Celebration of Art & Creativity benefiting the Kelsey-Seybold Foundation was held at Houston's fantastic new Museum of Health and Medical Science. Shown here are two very interesting people: at left is Hugh R. Butt, M.D., Professor Emeritus of the Mayo Medical School, a sculptor who hasn't let the passage of time slow him down, and the Huffington Center on Aging's benefactor, Ambassador Roy M. Huffington, a Houston businessman who is also a role model for all people, not just older ones, inasmuch as he is in training and may run in the Senior Olympics.

Dr. Butt's sculpture exhibited at the gala can be seen just above Ambassador Huffington. A self-taught artist, Dr. Butt's work in wire and metal has been exhibited nationally and expresses his interest and knowledge in the human form and the artist's belief that art should make one feel good, even laugh. We agree that his Calder/Matisse-like work makes one stop and ponder what this octogenarian artist's work means to us and even chuckle about the humorous images that the work conjures up in our minds. Dr. Butt, it works.

The event coordinator, Ms. Terry Litchfield, to whom we are indebted for this photo, chose to place at the end of the printed program a very pertinent quote from someone intimately knowledgeable about medicine: "For where there is the love of man, there is also love of the Art." --Hippocrates. Since this piece will be read by our fellow cybervillagers throughout the world, a quote from someone who lived from 1749-1832 that was used in an Arts and Medicine Symposium I helped coordinate at Baylor College of Medicine in 1978 may also be appropriate: "Science and Art belong to the whole world, and the barriers of nationality vanish before them." --Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.

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