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INFORMATION / COLLECTIONS / EXHIBITIONS
The Contemporary Arts Museum is a non-collecting institution dedicated to presenting the finest regional, national and international art of the last 40 years, within a dynamic exhibition schedule. The exhibitions are accompanied by publications and educational programming for local, regional, national and international audiences.
The Museum believes the living artist is its greatest educational asset and seeks to bring artists and the public into contact in as many ways as possible.
The Contemporary Arts Museum was founded in 1948 by a group of seven private citizens to present the art of their time and its role in modern life through exhibitions, lectures and other activities. The Museum's first exhibitions, mounted at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, and other sites around Houston, included This is Contemporary Art and L. Maholy-Nagy: Memorial Exhibition.
The success of these first efforts led in 1950 to the development of a small, professionally equipped building where exhibitions of the work of Vincent Van Gogh, Joan Miró, Alexander Calder, Max Ernst, and John Biggers and his students from the then fledgling Texas Negro College (now Texas Southern University) reflected Houston's receptiveness to new ideas.
In 1957, the once volunteer-run Museum hired its first professional director, Jermayne MacAgy, who organized such definitive exhibitions as The Sphere of Mondrian, Mark Rothko, The Disquieting Muse: Surrealism and Totems Not Taboo: Primitive Art. During the 1960's, the Museum's dedication to thematic exhibitions, architecture and design, and surveys of individual artists continued. Landmark exhibitions included The Emerging Figure and the early combine paintings of Robert Rauschenberg.
By the close of the 1960's, the Museum's programs and public had outgrown the 1950 facility, and the trustees secured capital funds and a prominent site on the corner of Montrose and Bissonnet on which the new building, designed by Gunnar Birkerts, was to be built. In 1972, the present facility opened, and throughout the 1970's, the Museum continued its commitment to showcasing regional and national art in such exhibitions as John Chamberlain, Dale Gas (one of the first surveys of Hispanic artistic contributions to American culture), and a theme exhibition, American Narrative/Story Art 1967-1977. Exhibitions of new Texas talent gave early recognition and encouragement to James Surls, John Alexander, and Luis Jimenez, among others.
In the 1980's, the Museum presented key exhibitions, including: installations for performance; thematic surveys of contemporary still-life and collage; a group exhibition of work by Texas artists; single-artist exhibitions of the work of Texans Earl Staley, Melissa Miller, and Vernon Fisher; and exhibitions by nationally-known artists Ida Applebroog, Robert Morris, Pat Steir, Bill Viola and Frank Stella.
In the 1990's, major shows have featured the works of single artists and thematic exhibitions included Art Guys: Think Twice; Tony Cragg: Sculpture 1975-1990; Ann Hamilton: kaph; Richard Long: Circles Cycles Mud Stone; Lari Pittman; Robert Rauschenberg: A Retrospective; James Turrell: Spirit and Light; William Wegman: Paintings and Drawings, Photographs and Videotapes; and Robert Wilson's Vision.
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