After 75 years, Houston’s Museum of Contemporary Art looks to expansion future

Even though Houston is the fourth most populous city in the United States, its arts scene is in many ways a well-kept secret. Outsiders often mistakenly think that there is a lack of culture here, but in fact it is a lack of culture. concentrated culture. With a schizophrenic miasma, the seemingly endless hustle and bustle of concrete and shopping malls and anti-zoning laws, the metropolis feels simultaneously uneducated and sprawling, yet imbued with a sincere, progressive spirit , pursuing unlimited possibilities. The United States has one of the most diverse populations, and the humility, sincerity, and warmth of its people set it apart.

This spirit is at the heart of the Museum of Contemporary Art Houston. Founded in 1948, CAMH recently celebrated its 75th anniversary with the exhibition “Six Scenarios of Our Future” (October 2023 to March 2024). Senior Curator Rebecca Matalon and Curator Patricia Restrepo invited six artists to respond to CAMH’s inaugural exhibition, This Is Contemporary Art, The exhibition addresses how people relate to contemporary life, boldly placing artworks alongside furniture, design and architectural elements. These Artists – Jill Magid, Leslie Martinez, Mel Chin, Leslie Hewitt, Lisa Lapins Lisa Lapinski and JooYoung Choi—both with ties to Houston or CAM Houston—work on display continues the legacy of the first show’s dissolving art category.

Founded as an artists’ cooperative by six local artists and architects, the organization called the Contemporary Art Society aims to bring contemporary art to Houston and bring a richer, more sophisticated arts community to the city. Since CAA did not have a venue at the time, “This Is Contemporary Art” was actually held at the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston.

“Soon after it was founded, there were more than 200 members,” Matalon said of CAMH’s early days. “You paid [dues] You show your work through your membership, and of course, as the institution grew and the understanding that Houston really needed a contemporary art space, its mission changed.

The museum soon moved to a semi-permanent location near downtown Houston and later to its current home, an iconic stainless steel parallelogram designed by Latvian architect Gunnar Birkerts in the Museum District. Soon, it could grow again as the museum considers potential expansion. Through it all, CAMH has long been a visionary agent in defining Houston’s cultural landscape.

“It has always been a very radical and experimental institution that has long supported women artists and artists of color, supporting artists across disciplines and media,” Matalon said. “CAMH is truly a place for radical experimentation and play.”

In fact, CAMH was founded on the verge of a tectonic shift in art history: post-World War II America. Although set during the heyday of Abstract Expressionism, both the curation of “This Is Contemporary Art” and the thrust of the exhibition catalog feel very original to Pop, in how the exhibition shows Houstonians how the art on display fits into their daily lives. Live life.

To achieve this, the exhibition presented modern art as well as other art genres such as graphic design, interior design, crafts and even household items in a way that was innovative for the time. These include Georges Braque, Alexander Calder, Mary Callery, Stuart Davis, Charles Eames , Walter Gropius, Marcel Breuer, Wassily Kandinsky, Knoll, Jacob Lawrence , Fernand Léger, John Marin, Joan Miró, Henry Moore, Edward Weston, etc. Artists and designers.

“The strategies used in the first exhibition have happened elsewhere,” Matalon said. “There is this synergy between commercial design and museum design in terms of how objects are displayed. Nothing like that is happening here [in Houston]”.

As the decades passed, CAMH’s scope expanded and the concepts surrounding the concept of “contemporary art” evolved, and in the 1990s it changed its policy to showcase works created within the past 40 years. In recent years, the museum has also hosted a series of landmark exhibitions, including “Radical Presence: Black Performance in Contemporary Art” and “Stonewall 50,” which opened in 2012 and toured nationally.

In January 2020, new executive director Hesse McGraw came on board, understanding that “CAMH needed to transform the way it related to our current relationship” [the] “This pandemic has created multifaceted crises, including the death of George Floyd, and the urgency with which we need to respond to different types of social, political crises,” Matalon said.

In “Six Views”, two artists, JooYoung Choi and Leslie Hewitt, The history of CAMH is reviewed within the larger sociological climate of the late 1940s. In Choi’s research for the exhibition, she uncovered disturbing revelations about the first show’s racist past: “I wanted to know about the first show and who was allowed to be in the first show,” she said. “So, that was the starting point for my research, which was that the first show at CAMH was segregated and one of my favorite artists, Jacob Lawrence, had work at that show and was therefore unable to go opening.

In puppet installations and video works, Choi considers these painful aspects of CAMH’s racial history. Her 2023 video, Pleasant vision and VFC interstellar presentation – great moments in the womb of the universe, recreating “the person I was when I was eight years old,” she said. “This is my version of ‘pure existence’…totally in a state of flow and just loving what she’s doing – that little girl sitting and painting watercolors until the sun goes down and they have to let her in.” The childlike wonder of the work is a way to disarm her audience into confronting the more difficult realities of racism and other forms of bigotry that she discusses in her work, as vastly different characters coexist, thrive, and contribute to Choi’s work. Fight for freedom.

Hewitt’s research led her to John S. Chase, the first African-American registered architect in Texas. “Given the collapse of design, architecture and ‘fine art,’ people have developed a vested interest in art’s ability to promise something that has not yet been delivered to society,” she said. This led her to ask a series of questions: “How can I connect the dots? What other perspectives can I bring? What does it mean for this institution to look back?”

Hewitt collaborated with artist Iman Raad to create graphic design pieces Forty-four-five-five-four-sixty-eight (2023), incorporating texts from influential civil rights court cases of the time—especially sweet and painter, which led to Chase being accepted into the University of Texas School of Architecture – Chase used house plans to create abstract architectural layouts when designing his own home. The work culminates in a floor filled with posters that visitors can take home, like Felix González-Torres did.

Architectural features are also present in Hewitt’s other contribution to the exhibition, two untitled works that recreate the original dimensions of the walls of the Museum of Fine Arts Houston, which hosts “This Is Contemporary Art.” Hewitt sees this architecture as part of the institution’s metadata. “It’s a haunting feeling – the past resonates,” she said.

So, what happens next for CAMH? “We are in the beginning stages of potential future expansion that will allow the museum to have an even greater impact on our city and community,” CAMH Director McGraw said in a recent phone interview. “We are beginning to plan for the future of the campus. Influential design.”

As part of the expansion, the museum acquired several adjacent properties along Bayard Street, and McGraw said, “This has really been a 40-year effort — it’s happened. Very fast, completed within the last 9 months.

As of now, it remains unclear how this expansion will manifest, although CAMH “will engage a community advisory committee to ensure that the vision and goals of the program are grounded in representative expertise and values ​​and aligned with the shared aspirations of the community.” Press release.

Will CAMH’s conception of contemporary art—particularly its impending expansion—change in the next 25 or 50 years? Matalon posits: “The contemporary has a context.”