History of Art and Architecture

Houston has prepared numerous books and articles, most recently Temple of the Night Sun: A Royal Maya Tomb at El Diablo, Guatemala. His work The Life Within: Classic Maya and the Matter of Permanence won the PROSE Award for Art History and Criticism in 2015. He also co-curated Fiery Pool: The Maya and the Mythic Sea, an exhibition exploring ecological aesthetics in Maya civilization. His research interests include archaeology; kingship and court systems; body concepts in antiquity; writing systems; epigraphy and decipherment; architecture and urbanism; Classic Maya; South America; Europe. He has excavated at the Classic Maya city of El Zotz, Guatemala, and at the ruins of Piedras Negras, Guatemala. In 2023 gave the 72nd A.W. Mellon Lectures in the Fine Arts: Vital Signs: The Visual Cultures of Maya Writing, at the National Gallery of Art.