Beginning In 1948, a group of seven Houston citizens founded the Contemporary Arts Museum with the goal of presenting new art to the community and to document arts role in modern life through
exhibitions,
lectures and other activities. The museum initially presented exhibitions at various locations throughout the city, sometimes using
The Museum of Fine Arts. These first presentations included "This is Contemporary Art" and "
László Moholy-Nagy: Memorial Exhibition." By 1950, the success of these efforts allowed the museum to build of a small, professionally equipped facility where ambitious exhibitions of the work of
Vincent van Gogh,
Joan Miró,
Alexander Calder,
Max Ernst, and
John T. Biggers and his students from the then-fledgling Texas Negro College (now
Texas Southern University). Houstonians were receptive to new ideas. By the end of the
decade, the Contemporary Arts Museum had outgrown the original 1950 facility, so the
trustees raised funds to purchase a prominent site on the corner of Montrose and Bissonnet, where the new building, designed by
Gunnar Birkerts, was built. In 1972, the present building opened with a controversial exhibition called
Ten, featuring several artists working in non-
traditional media. The museum continued to showcase new national and regional art, throughout the 1970s, including such presentations 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. In addition, exhibitions of new
Texas talent provided early venues for works of
James Surls,
John Alexander, and
Luis Jimenez, among others.
Continued growth In the 1980s, the museum grew significantly, extending its sphere of influence with exhibitions that presented and toured surveys of installations for performance art; contemporary still-life painting; a group exhibition of work by Texas artists; and single-artist shows of artists like
Ida Applebroog,
Robert Morris,
Pat Steir,
Bill Viola and
Frank Stella, as well as Texans Earl Staley,
Melissa Miller and Vernon Fisher. In addition, Director Linda L. Cathcart established
Perspectives in the museum's lower gallery—a fast-paced series of exhibitions focusing on cycles of work by emerging and well-known artists that had not previously shown in Houston. As of 2011, over 175 exhibitions have taken place within the innovative series. In the 1990s, the museum adjusted its focus to concentrate only on art made created within the past 40 years. It also worked to extend its reach internationally. Major single-artist exhibitions at the end of the 20th century included
Art Guys: Think Twice,
Tony Cragg: Sculpture,
Ann Hamilton: kaph,
Richard Long: Circles Cycles Mud Stone,
Nic Nicosia: Real Pictures,
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''. ==Modern museum==