I spent the first part of my career in the art world and book publishing. I was Executive Director and Curator of Houston Center for Photography, and in 2021 I co-founded Assembly, a contemporary art gallery in Houston’s Museum District. For more than a decade I worked alongside artists, collectors and museums, deciding what belonged together and why.

I started Ashlyn Burns Interiors in 2024, after designing my own home in Woodland Heights with two young daughters underfoot. I found that the questions I’d always asked in a gallery were the same ones that make a house feel like home. What earns its place? What does this piece say to the one beside it? What will still matter in twenty years?

I don’t believe in decorated rooms. I believe in rooms that accumulate. They carry the evidence of a life being lived: art being loved, children growing up, dinner parties running long. I respect a home’s architecture, then layer it with color, antiques, vintage finds, custom pieces and art that couldn’t belong to anyone else.

I often work alongside architects and builders, and I advise clients on building and placing their art collections. The homes I love most are the ones nobody could have made except the people who live in them.

Ashlyn holds a BA in art history from Pratt Institute and an MA from the University of Texas at Austin, where she studied the history of photography. Her curatorial work has been featured in numerous publications and she is co-author of a book on American photography, Islands of the Blest. She currently serves on the board of FotoFest.