Museum Exhibits in Houston This Month: July 2021

Grab a last look or first glimpse at opening and closing museum exhibits and installations throughout Greater Houston in July 2021.

This month, Houston welcomes a vibrant exhibition at MFAH, an exploration of the Central Andes at the Menil, and a site-specific installation from an LA-based artist at the CAMH.

Several exhibitions are also on their way out this month, from beautiful and bright paintings by Latina artist Virginia Jaramillo to interactive structures on the Rice University campus, and more.

Click here to check out more ongoing installation and exhibitions in museums around Greater Houston.

First Look: Opening Exhibitions in Houston This Month

• Cauleen Smith: We Already Have What We Need at Contemporary Arts Museum Houston | Opens Thursday, July 15 | FREE – Across film, sculpture, textiles, drawing, and a site-specific installation, the LA-based artist emphasizes caring—for each other and the planet that sustains us—as ways of coping with the inequities and injustices we face in the past and present.
• Olga de Amaral: To Weave a Rock at Museum of Fine Arts, Houston | Opens Sunday, July 25 – Debuting at MFAH, this retrospective of the Colombian-born fiber artist traces six decades of her vibrant, radical work that transformed flat design forms into architectural components through her work in tapestry and textiles.
• Enchanted: Visual Histories of the Central Andes at the Menil Collection | Opens Friday, July 30 | FREE – This collection explores pre-Hispanic archeological finds, including textiles, ceramic vessels, ceremonial works and religious painting, in combination with photographs by Pierre Verger taken during trips through the Central Andes.

Click here to check out more ongoing installation and exhibitions in museums around Greater Houston.

Save on 1-Day & Multi-Day Museum Passes Around Houston

Last Chance: Closing Exhibitions in Houston This Month

• Virginia Jaramillo: The Curvilinear Paintings, 1969-1974 at the Menil Collection | Ends Saturday, July 3, 2021 | FREE – Calling to the fiftieth anniversary of The De Luxe Show, one of the first racially integrated contemporary art exhibitions in the United States, the Menil highlights the work of Jaramillo, who was the only woman and Latina included in that exhibition. Her eight abstract paintings feature thin, undulating lines across monochrome fields of bright, flat color.
• Found Objects by Joe Hale Haden at Archway Gallery | Ends Wednesday, July 7, 2021 | FREE – By re-purposing found objects, trash, or scrap materials, Joe Hale Haden intends to shift the viewer’s perception of that object, eliciting a renewed interest and altering its original purpose for a greater beauty.
• Shahidul Alam: Truth to Power at Asia Society Texas Center | Ends Sunday, July 11, 2021 – See more than 60 images and ephemera showing the breadth of Bangladeshi photographer, writer, activist, and institution-builder Shahidul Alam’s practice. The exhibit displays his impact across four decades and explores how art can be a tool for social justice. Included with admission.
• 2020 Fellowship Exhibition at Houston Center for Photography | Ends Sunday, July 11, 2021 | FREE – Each year, HCP grants fellowships to highlight two artists’ work and offer a platform to continue developing their projects. This year’s recipients are Elizabeth Bick, who has brought her training as a dancer to the three-part series of photographs entitled Movement Studies, and Briana Vargas, who photographed communities around the feast day of the Virgin of Guadalupe in a rural region of Mexico’s state of San Luis Potosi, in her body of work, Dicen.
• Collaborations XVIII: Isolation at Houston Center for Photography | Ends Sunday, July 11, 2021 | FREE – This exhibition features work from Houston-area high school students as they create an exhibition from beginning to end.
• VISIONS: A Celebration of the Creativity of the Jung Center Community at the Jung Center | Ends Wednesday, July 14, 2021 | FREE – Once a year, the students, members, faculty, and staff of the Jung Center showcase their artwork from across a variety of media, that delves into their own, individual inner journeys and the meaning found in their lives.
• Heaven, Earth & the Underworld: Old Master Prints from the Permanent Collection at the Printing Museum | Ends Sunday, July 18, 2021 – Trace the early history of printmaking in Western Europe at this exhibition, featuring more than 40 woodcuts, engravings and etchings that reveal the path from armor decorators to the works of Renaissance and Enlightenment painters like Albrecht Dürer, Annibale Carraci and Giovanni Battista Piranesi.
• The Mountain That Does Not Describe a Circle: Works by Hong Hong at Asia Society Texas Center | Ends Sunday, July 25, 2021 – Explore paper works by Hong Hong, which reveal gestures, textures, material structure, surfaces, functions, of the taken-for-granted medium. The exhibit, which channels the ASTC’s stunning gallery as a canvas in itself, beautifully illustrates paper’s ability to communicate a complex amount of data and emotion.
• Creative Interventions: Rice University Outdoor Structures at Moody Center for the Arts | Ends Monday, July 26 | FREE – A new campus art initiative for the 2020-21 academic year includes art murals and installations on the sides of new campus tent facilities and open-air structures, including Allison Hunter’s video projection work showing the movement of bees, Jasmine Zelaya’s Detroit Red celebrating friendship and connectivity in the era of COVID-19, Gonzo247’s Rice Community Mural, a barn-raising from the Dutch collective We Make Carpets, and more.

Click here to check out more ongoing installation and exhibitions in museums around Greater Houston.

Save on Multi-Day Museum Passes Around Houston