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The Contemporary Arts Museum Houston is a non-collecting institution
dedicated to presenting the best and most exciting international,
national and regional art. Through dynamic
exhibitions accompanied by scholarly publications and accessible
educational programs, the Museum reaches out to local, regional,
national and international audiences of various ages.
The Contemporary Arts Museum Houston was founded in 1948 by a
group of seven Houston citizens to present new art and to document
its role in modern life through exhibitions, lectures and other
activities. The Museum's first exhibitions were presented
at various sites throughout
the city, such as The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, and included
This is Contemporary Art and L. Maholy-Nagy: Memorial
Exhibition.
The success of these first efforts led in 1950 to the building
of a small, professionally equipped facility where ambitious
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 1955, the once volunteer-run Museum hired Jermayne MacAgy
as its first professional director. Ms. MacAgy organized such
definitive exhibitions as The Sphere of Mondrian, Mark Rothko (his second museum
exhibition), The Disquieting Muse: Surrealism and Totems
Not Taboo: Primitive Art. During the 1960s, the Museum's dedication
to thematic
exhibitions, architecture and design, and surveys of individual
artists continued. Landmark exhibitions included The Emerging
Figure and the
influential combine paintings of Robert Rauschenberg.
By the close of the 1960s, the Museum's programs and audiences
had outgrown the 1950 facility, and the trustees secured capital
funds and a prominent site on the corner of Montrose and Bissonnet
where
the new building, designed by Gunnar Birkerts, was built. In
1972, the present facility opened with the controversial exhibition
Ten,
which featured several artists working in non-traditional media.
Throughout the 1970s, the Museum continued its commitment to
showcasing the newest
national and regional art in such exhibitions as John Chamberlain,
Dalé Gas (one of the first surveys of Hispanic artists in the
U.S.), and a major thematic 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 1980s, the Museum contributed vigorously to the emergence
of Houston as one of the most significant cultural centers in
the nation. From 1979 to 1984, the Museum grew significantly,
extending its reach
with major exhibitions that presented and toured thematic surveys
of installations for performance art; contemporary still-life
painting; an important group exhibition of work by Texas artists;
and one-person
shows of nationally-known artists such as Ida Applebroog, Robert
Morris,
Pat Steir, Bill Viola and Frank Stella as well as exhibitions
of the work of Texans Earl Staley, Melissa Miller, and Vernon
Fisher. At the
start of the decade Director Linda L. Cathcart established Perspectives
in the Museum’s lower gallery. Perspectives is a fast-paced series
of medium-sized exhibitions focusing on cycles of work by emerging
and well-known artists not previously shown in Houston. Over
135 shows have taken place within the series that continues today.
In the 1990s, the Museum sharpened its focus, concentrating on
art made within the past 40 years and extending its reach internationally.
Major one-person exhibitions included Art Guys: Think Twice;
Tony Cragg: Sculpture 1975-1990; Ann Hamilton: kaph; Richard
Long: Circles Cycles
Mud Stone; Nic Nicosia: Real Pictures 1979-1999; Introjection:
Tony Oursler: 1976-1999; Lari Pittman; Robert Rauschenberg: A
Retrospective; James Turrell: Spirit and Light; William Wegman:
Paintings and
Drawings,
Photographs and Videotapes; and Robert Wilson's Vision.
The Museum closed on January 1, 1997 for its first major facility
renovation in 25 years. Funded by a highly successful capital
campaign, the Museum reopened to the public on May 10, 1997 with
Finders/Keepers. This landmark exhibition documented the institution’s
relationship to the community, borrowing back important works of art
that had remained
in the region after first being presented in exhibitions at the
Museum. Other important thematic presentations during the decade included
Elvis
+ Marilyn: Two Times Immortal; Abstract Painting Once Removed; and Other
Narratives.
The new millennium was celebrated by the Museum with a look back
at some of the most arresting and important installations of
the previous decade in the exhibition Outbound: Passages from
the Nineties. Other
thematic exhibitions of the new century have included Afterimage:
Drawing Through Process; Subject Plural; and The Inward Eye.
One-person shows
have focused on groundbreaking figures in all media and have
included Uta Barth; When One is Two: The Art of Alighiero e Boetti;
William
Kentridge and Juan Muñoz.
In 2002, the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston adopted a five-year
strategic plan that calls for the dedication of additional
resources to exhibitions, publications and public programs.
The plan is
intended to guide the Museum well into the present decade and
enable it to better
serve the public. The Contemporary Arts Museum Houston is currently
implementing this plan with an exciting exhibition schedule
and innovative educational programs planned for 2003 and 2004.
A complete history of exhibitions at the Museum can be found
in the Exhibition History section.
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