Home All Stories

Art

Chron •

Artists from all over come to Houston for new gallery show

When Houston native Vincent Nguyen started to miss all his friends from art school in New York City, he came up with an idea: Why not have a gallery show and bring them all to Houston?

That show, called Friend of a Friend, will open May 12 at Reeves Art & Design in Montrose. It has two purposes: to bring a group of up-and-coming and established artists to Houston, where viewers can see their work firsthand, and to introduce Houston as a Southern cultural hub to those artists. The exhibit will f
Chron •

Explore the history of the Jewish deli in Houston

"The delicatessen is my life" says Ziggy Gruber as he walks through a gallery at the Holocaust Museum Houston on a Thursday afternoon in May. Most Houstonians know Gruber as the co-founder of Houston-based deli Kenny & Ziggy's, but on this day he's playing unofficial tour guide, taking a small group through the museum's newest exhibition.

Called I'll Have What She's Having, the exhibit examines the cultural and historical significance of the Jewish deli, a uniquely American phenomenon born out
Chron •

Here's what Owen Wilson saw at the Menil Collection this week

Movie star and native Dallasite Owen Wilson made a stop at Houston's Menil Collection this week, according to a picture from the museum posted to Instagram on Wednesday. The actor, known for movies like Wedding Crashers, Marley & Me, and his longtime collaboration with Houston-born filmmaker Wes Anderson, visited the museum on May 3, according to the post. The image shows Wilson standing beneath one of the museum's stately oak trees outside the Cy Twombly Gallery, and is filled with numerous "wo
Chron •

South Texas meets South Asia in new Houston art exhibit

In her work as a curator at the Blaffer Art Museum, Houstonian Erika Mei Chua Holum began to see similarities between artists and creators in Houston and those working in Southern Asia. Holum, who is Filipinx, refers to this as a "South-South relationship."

"I started to see overlaps in how art is being created," she says, "And I started to think about 'What does it look like to generate knowledge from the South?'"

Those intersections are the subject of a new exhibit curated by Holum, now open
Chron •

Tribute to Texas icon Daniel Johnston is coming to Houston

A few years before his death, Marjory Johnston took her brother, the artist and musician Daniel Johnston, on a shopping trip. "I would take him to thrift stores," says Marjory, who still sometimes refers to her brother in the present tense. "That was one of his favorite things."


On this thrifting trip, Daniel fixated on a set of vintage sewing patterns. He liked the drawings of women on the front, and wanted to add them to the collection of ephemera and other knickknacks overtaking his alread
Chron •

How a Houston muralist is bringing Juneteenth all across America

A few years ago, Houston artist Reginald C. Adams set a goal for himself to paint 10 new murals by the end of 2022. "It was very ambitious," he says—but maybe not too ambitious. It's taken a few extra months, but by the end of this June, he will have commissioned a total of nine murals commemorating Juneteenth in eight American cities. And it all started in Galveston.

The island just south of Houston is known as the birthplace of Juneteenth because it was there that Union Army Major General Gor
Chron •

Two incredible new exhibits just opened at Houston's Menil

Two new exhibits opening Friday at the Menil Drawing Institute look at a pair of relatively obscure mid-century artists who both captured a changing planet and society after World War II.

Like many postwar artists, both Gray Foy and Si Lewen rejected the mechanical precision of realism in favor of more dreamlike scenes. For Foy, those dreams incorporate botanical elements, mysterious worlds, and minute details. Meanwhile, Lewen's works resemble more of a nightmare—the faceless victims of war, t
Chron •

Color Factory Houston's new exhibit pays tribute to Texas women

Tina Malhotra, the CEO of Color Factory, lives in Houston. All the same, she was surprised to learn how many famous female singers hail from the Lone Star State. She knew about Beyoncé, Janis Jolpin, and Lizzo, of course. But there were others she didn't know were born here, including Selena Gomez, Hilary Duff, and Tayna Tucker.

That discovery has led to a brand new installation which opened earlier this month at Color Factory Houston called "A Royal (Disco) Ball" that pays homage to more than
Chron •

These artists turned Houston's natural beauty into a walking exhibit

Houston may seem like an urban art paradise, but just 40 minutes northeast, at the edge of the Sam Houston National Forest, is a massive 177-acre compound and gallery space founded by two of the city's most influential artists of the past 50 years.

That compound, known as the Locke-Surls Center for Art and Nature, just outside of Splendora, Texas, will host a massive, multidisciplinary outdoor sculpture exhibition co-organized by DiverseWorks, opening April 22 and 23 in honor of Earth Day.

Cal
Chron •

Houston author Nick Flynn channels dead mystic in new adaptation

Houston author Nick Flynn has spent the better part of a decade trying to bring an epic poem by Romantic writer William Blake to the stage. During that time, he's endured hurricanes in the North Sea and a global pandemic. Now, a film version of that performance is set to make its world premiere in Houston this weekend at the Silos at Sawyer Yards.

The performance, called The Nine Dreams, will be an immersive experience featuring nine filmed vignettes, each about five minutes long, installed ins
Chron •

All the events leading up to Houston's Art Car Parade

Driving around Houston this past weekend, you may have already seen signs of one of the city's most iconic events: the Art Car Parade, now in its 36th year. Whether it's Cheerio the Hippo or that vehicle covered with singing fish, art cars have already begun descending on the Bayou City in preparation for one of the largest outsider art events in the United States.

For the uninitiated, art cars are vehicles that have been modified or embellished in some way. For the most part, art car "cartists
Chron •

One of Houston's coolest museums reopens this weekend

After closing for nearly a year, The Printing Museum (TPM) in Houston will reopen April 1 in its new location, a smaller but more flexible space in Midtown Houston.

The museum, founded in 1979, is dedicated to championing the history and power of the printed word. It houses more than 10,000 objects relating to the industry and technology of printing, including antiquities dating back to 3000 BCE. The museum is also well-known for its workshops on papermaking, bookbinding, letterpress printing,
Chron •

Houston art-world giant James Harithas dead at 90

James Harithas, who served as director of Houston's Contemporary Arts Museum for a spell in the 1970s before going on to found both Houston's Art Car Museum and Station Museum, has died at the age of 90. His death was first reported by Orange Show curator of programs Pete Gershon on Facebook this weekend. Gershon, who authored a book about Houston's art scene from 1972 to 1985, called Harithas "without a doubt the most influential force on the Houston art scene over the past 50 years."

Harithas
Chron •

Play pick-up basketball on this Houston museum's surrealist court

In an immersive exhibit three decades in the making, the main gallery of Contemporary Arts Museum Houston (CAMH) will soon be converted into a full-size basketball court thanks to Houston-based artist Trenton Doyle Hancock. The exhibit, called CAMH Court, is a partnership with the artist, the museum, and sportswear company Adidas. CAMH executive director Hesse McGraw says it's the first-ever playable basketball court to be installed in an art museum.

The installation, which runs from March 18 t
Chron •

Houston artists tackle COVID anxiety through dance and painting

Like many people during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, artist Donna E. Perkins found herself glued to the news. Living alone at the time, she'd spend hours in front of the television, watching what felt like a world on fire—millions of deaths, the George Floyd protests, the insurrection, the war in Ukraine. Perkins, who lived alone when Harris County first went into lockdown, says it was a period of "tremendous isolation" for her.

To distract herself, she began making small paintings
Chron •

One of Houston's most popular art installations is coming back

One of the Museum of Fine Arts Houston's most popular art installations in recent years is set to go back on display later this month.

Pixel Forest, by Swiss artist Pipilotti Rist, will reopen in the museum's Cullinan Hall on March 12. The installation, which consists of thousands of hanging orbs filled with LED lights, will be accompanied by a large-scale video installation called Worry Will Vanish. Both works were last shown at the museum in the summer of 2017, the year that they were acquire
Chron •

Houston's premier experimental cinema is relocating

Aurora Picture Show, the experimental "microcinema" founded in Houston in 1998, will be moving into a new home in the East End Cultural District later this year.

The new location, at 201 Roberts Street, is part of The Plant, a community development in the Second Ward being built in 13 historic industrial buildings that once served as the headquarters of oil field manufacturer W-K-M. The new development, between Harrisburg Boulevard and Buffalo Bayou East, will include restaurants, retail, gathe
Chron •

400 years separate the violent paintings of a new Houston art exhibit

In one painting, a young woman kneels over a bed with a sword in her right hand. In her left hand, she claws at a man's hair, the blade at his throat, as blood cascades down the bed's white sheets.

In a second painting, a Black woman stands before a background of colorful flowers. In her left hand she holds the severed head of a white woman by the ponytail. Her sword, in her right hand, is partially obscured behind her back. Unlike the first painting, this one shows only a few drops of blood.
Chron •

This weekend, 'Cambodian Rock Band' will rock Houston

In the 1960s and 1970s, a new kind of music emerged in Cambodia—a psychedelic garage sound that combined the country's traditional music with elements borrowed from rock and pop records imported from the West. But just as the genre was really taking off, it was cut short, as artists like Sinn Sisamouth and Ros Sereysothea were killed by the Khmer Rouge during the genocide of the late '70s. Just like that, a vibrant new chapter in rock history was brought to an abrupt end.

Yet Cambodian rock has
Chron •

Go under the sea with a new exhibit by this Houston artist

The term "midnight zone" refers to the layers of ocean so deep—3,000 to 10,000 feet below the surface—that sunlight can't reach them. This makes life difficult to sustain, but many species have developed unique traits, such as bioluminescence, in order to survive.

Those creatures, and the darkness that surrounds them, serve as the inspiration for a new exhibit by Houston's own Adela Andea opening Friday evening at Anya Tish Gallery. "Midnight Zone(s)," which will run through February 25, is a c
Load More

Let's get social