Vance Muse, the unfussy but urbane director of communications at the Menil Collection, retired Thursday after 16 years as the consummate back-of-the-house guy for a museum frequented by art world luminaries and A-list celebrities who often want to be discreet.

We met recently on the patio of the Menil Bistro to discuss some of those times, but before we got far into it, he noticed a woman at another table whose necklace he admired. When she got up to leave, he chatted her up, becoming instant friends.

Muse always is "on" that way, never letting a stranger go un-met, always connecting the social dots, his mind swimming with the names of the million people he knows and their girlfriends or parents or cousins. It turned out that the woman's brother is his next-door neighbor.

Muse was born at Hermann Hospital, grew up on Ruskin Street in West University Place and graduated from Lee High School. He thought he was finished with Houston after he left for the University of Texas-Austin in 1969.

He drove a battered Toyota Corona to New York after college and found work as a copywriter at Simon & Schuster. By the 1990s, he was writing plum freelance assignments for major media outlets and dividing his time between Los Angeles and the remote idyll of Robinhood, Maine, where the artist Carl Palazzolo, his long-time companion, lives all summer.

Muse interviewed Diana Vreeland for the New York Times, Joseph Papp and Leonard Bernstein for special issues of Life, August Wilson for Vanity Fair, Michael Tracy for Harper's Bazaar and Texas Gov. Ann Richards for House & Garden. He also had a half-dozen fun "Talk of the Town" assignments for the New Yorker, including a visit with Julia Child.

"It was so hard. Three hundred words for about $1 a word. No pay. But it was such good exercise," he said.

He was visiting his ailing father in Galveston when Dominique de Menil died on New Year's Eve 1997. A wake at her home gave him a gem of a "Talk of the Town" opportunity. Although he wasn't there, he reported the heck out of it, capturing the evening's surreal aspects with deadpan humor, relaying how a piano tuner worked in the living room while the home's architect, Philip Johnson, debated visiting the body down the hall.

The Menil Collection had been open for a decade but didn't have anyone to help Muse check facts. He told Paul Winkler, who was the director then, that they needed a press office. Winkler gave Muse the job in 1999.

The Menil always has had the aura of a place that belongs not just to Houston, but the world. Arriving with a coveted media list he still guards, Muse had the right connections to prime that pump.

He immediately invited Pilar Viladas, a long-time design writer for the New York Times (now at Town & Country), to give the de Menils' home on San Felipe a "last look" before it changed. She delivered a 14-page photo spread.

"It was starting off with a bang, I thought," he said.

"Of course, you want serious art criticism and reviews, but you never condescend to travel magazines or design magazines, newspaper news and metro sections - especially this place. It's a neighborhood of art."

He thought he'd stay at the Menil two years. But the job and the people kept getting more interesting. He set up his office strategically in the bungalow just opposite the museum's back door so he could monitor when celebrities were arriving or TV trucks pulled up.

That bungalow also held the staff mailroom and coffee pot. Walter Hopps, the museum's original director, came in often.

"Had I been an artist, I would have been so intimidated. I wouldn't have known what to say around him. But I'm not," Muse said. "I loved his stories. He could vividly recall the first time he saw a painting, all of that. He was always late. Sound familiar? I learned from Walter Hopps."

Muse's work at the Menil often turned into play, and crazy things tended to happen out of the blue.

One night as Muse was leaving a movie theater, Lynn Wyatt called and asked, "Do you want to have dinner with Mick and me?" She was with Mick Jagger.

"I biked home as fast as I could and met them at the Mockingbird Bistro. He was with L'Wren Scott, who died (in 2014), really sadly. It was a wonderful evening," he said.

Jagger, Muse learned, loved the artist Cy Twombly. He wanted to visit the Twombly Gallery at the Menil.

"And I took all the Cy Twombly publications we had to the Four Seasons Hotel. I saved his voicemail thank-you as long as I could. He was so smart; he knew so much about Twombly," Muse said. "As Beyoncé does about Surrealism, it seems. She loves Max Ernst's work."

He said the Houston-born pop star visits the Menil occasionally with her mother, sister and friends. "They usually come to the back door on a Tuesday, when the museum is closed. We let them in, of course. She doesn't look like Beyoncé because she hasn't done her big glamour thing. Although she's beautiful. It's just like a girlfriend trip to the museum."

Once when Muse's phone rang, caller ID showed a 415 area code and the word "Zoetrope."

"That must be the Coppolas," he thought. He was right.

Legendary filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola, who was on his way from California to New York to receive an honor, wanted to stop his plane in Houston so his family could visit the Menil for a few hours. Eleanor Coppola, the director's wife, collects works by Twombly. Siblings Sophia and Roman Coppola were along for the ride.

"Francis Ford of course went in and looked, but he spent most of his time under that incredible tree just outside the Twombly Gallery. He'd never seen a tree like that," Muse said. "That made me look at the tree in a new way, and Houston."

Frugal, practical and a tad eccentric, Muse resisted buying a car for a long time. He still rides around the inner city on a bike. And not a status symbol kind of bike; he likes his wheels basic.

"As long as it's hybrid and lightweight and deals with the streets," he said.

He wishes now he'd taken photographs of all the famous people he's met at the Menil, including Renzo Piano, Simon Schama, Drew Barrymore, Walter Cronkite, John Updike, Gwyneth Paltrow and Luke Wilson.

"I always wanted jobs where you would meet and talk with writers and artists," he said.

The Menil post wasn't all glamour.

"I tried to see this place as a first-timer does," Muse said.

He spent countless hours in meetings and writing press releases. He delivered maps and posters to hotel concierges and held a rally to introduce taxi drivers to the museum. He even once lobbied the city to patch the streets around the museum's campus.

"I don't want to brag, but you have to go down to city hall, charm them, talk about public safety and how we're a destination for people who spend money. That was kind of a neat moment," he said.

Lately, Muse has felt a lot of "circularity" in his life.

He's returning to freelancing, already planning projects for the Los Angeles Review of Books and Texas Monthly. He also has a book in the works about a fascinating figure who knew everyone in the worlds of art and publishing. It is neither a memoir nor a Menil tell-all.