From Rauschenberg’s radical fabrics to A.A.Murakami’s immersive worlds, discover Houston’s most exciting museum shows while in town for the inaugural Untitled Art Houston.
by Erica Silverman
As Houston welcomes the inaugural edition of Untitled Art Houston, the city’s museums and cultural spaces are alive with world-class exhibitions not to be missed. Whether you’re drawn to Robert Rauschenberg’s groundbreaking fabric works at The Menil Collection, A.A.Murakami’s sensory environments at the Museum of Fine Arts, or Roberto Lugo’s Hip Hop-infused ceramics at the Houston Center for Contemporary Craft, Houston offers an extraordinary mix of innovation and reflection. Add to your itinerary the meditative Rothko Chapel, the experimental “Bio Morphe” at Rice University, and the Gulf Coast-rooted group show at Blaffer Art Museum for a truly unforgettable art experience.
The Menil Collection
“Robert Rauschenberg: Fabric Works of the 1970s”
Montrose
Marking the centennial of Robert Rauschenberg’s birth, The Menil Collection presents the first museum survey dedicated to the artist’s radical use of fabric in the 1970s. Featuring major loans from museum collections and the Rauschenberg Foundation, the exhibition highlights series such as the Venetians, Hoarfrosts, and Jammers, in which the artist explored the expressive potential of cloth through draping, printing, and sail-like constructions. The show also revisits his collaborations in set and costume design, underscoring Rauschenberg’s engagement with movement, light, and performance. Together, these works reveal how the Texas-born artist transformed woven material into a medium of invention, sensuality, and experimentation.
What we love: The exhibition captures Rauschenberg’s fusion of art and life through fabric that floats, shimmers, and moves like living sculpture.
Robert Rauschenberg “Fabric Works of the 1970s” at The Menil Collection
September 19, 2025–March 1, 2026
Museum of Fine Arts, Houston
“A.A.Murakami: Floating World”
Museum District
The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston presents Floating World: A.A.Murakami, the first U.S. museum solo exhibition by the Tokyo- and London-based artist duo and their largest project to date. Across four immersive environments, the artists explore the forces of light, fog, plasma, and sound, blending cutting-edge technology with natural phenomena. From the sculptural Cell and glowing Neon Sun to the bubble-filled Beyond the Horizon and fog-ringed Passage, the works create fleeting encounters with elemental beauty. Together, they transform the gallery into a sensory journey that recalls Japan’s historic ukiyo, or “floating world.”
What we love: The exhibition captures the wonder of nature’s most ephemeral forces—bubbles, fog, and plasma—rendered as living, ever-shifting art.
“Floating World: A.A.Murakami” at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston
May 4–September 21, 2025
Blaffer Art Museum at the University of Houston
“a way to mend,” curated by Doug Welsh
University of Houston, Third Ward
The Blaffer Art Museum presents a way to mend, a group exhibition of 19 Gulf Coast artists exploring the intersection of abstraction, landscape, and healing. Anchored by a 1949 painting by visionary artist Forrest Bess, the show considers resilience and transformation through recurring motifs, symbols, and forms that bridge human and non-human experience. Curated by Houston-based artist and writer Doug Welsh, the exhibition is accompanied by commissioned texts from five writers, deepening its exploration of solitude, spirituality, and collective repair. Together, these works offer a poetic meditation on resilience rooted in Gulf Coast culture.
What we love: The exhibition connects Forrest Bess’s visionary practice to a new generation of Gulf Coast artists engaging art as a form of healing and transformation.
“a way to mend” at the Blaffer Art Museum
June 7–September 7, 2025
Rothko Chapel
Mark Rothko: “The Rothko Chapel”
Montrose
The Rothko Chapel is an interfaith sanctuary that welcomes over 100,000 visitors each year as a place of solitude, gathering, and dialogue. Inside, 14 monumental canvases by Mark Rothko create a meditative environment that invites spiritual reflection and artistic contemplation. Designed with architects Philip Johnson, Howard Barnstone, and Eugene Aubry, the space blends art and architecture into a profound experience. On the Plaza, Barnett Newman’s Broken Obelisk rises above a reflecting pool, dedicated to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., embodying the Chapel’s mission of justice, peace, and human rights.
What we love: The Chapel unites Rothko’s immersive art with a living legacy of social justice and spiritual reflection.
“The Rothko Chapel” in Houston
Open year-round
Moody Center for the Arts at Rice University
“Bio Morphe”
Rice University, Museum District
The Moody Center for the Arts presents “Bio Morphe,” a fall exhibition uniting seven international artists whose works channel biomorphic forms to probe the intersections of art, science, and society. From Eva Fàbregas’s soft organ-like sculptures to Sui Park’s synthetic cellular structures, the show highlights the tension between organic life and engineered materials. Paintings, installations, and sculptural works by Christina Quarles, Tishan Hsu, Lucy Kim, Berenice Olmedo, and Louise Bourgeois reveal how representations of the body and biology can illuminate questions of gender, disability, consumption, and technological innovation, sparking a dialogue across art, neuroscience, and bioengineering.
What we love: “Bio Morphe” makes visible the unseen—transforming biology into art that pulses between wonder and critique.
“Bio Morphe” at the Moody Center for the Arts
September 5–December 20, 2025
Houston Center for Contemporary Craft
Roberto Lugo: “Pigeon Crib, Houston Edition”
Museum District
The Houston Center for Contemporary Craft presents Pigeon Crib: Houston Edition, the first Texas solo exhibition of celebrated ceramicist Roberto Lugo. Known for fusing classical pottery with contemporary cultural icons, Lugo reimagines traditional forms with portraits of figures such as Selena, Tupac Shakur, and Sojourner Truth alongside Hip Hop emblems and graffiti-inspired motifs. His remix of ceramic history challenges colonial legacies while affirming clay’s universal resonance. At the heart of the exhibition, Lugo creates his own version of Whistler’s iconic Peacock Room, transforming the gallery into a vibrant meditation on power, cultural memory, and artistic connoisseurship.
What we love: Lugo brings Hip Hop, autobiography, and activism into the refined history of ceramics, remixing past and present with fearless energy.
“Pigeon Crib: Houston Edition” at the Houston Center for Contemporary Craft
September 6–October 25, 2025
