Museum Exhibits Openings & Closings in Houston: March 2020

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Tour through thought-provoking new museum exhibits and catch your last chance to see closing exhibitions and art installations at museums, galleries, and more around Houston in March 2020.

From world-class museums and installations throughout the Greater Houston area, we’ve compiled a list of fascinating and engaging featured exhibits that are opening and closing at institutions across the city of Houston, including free offerings that are always open to the public.

If you want to read more about the following exhibitions, as well as other ongoing museum exhibits and installations, check out our Current Museum Exhibits & Art Installations Guide.

Museum Exhibits Openings & Closings: March 2020

This month, ten new exhibitions are unveiled to the public, while eighteen close to make way for more exciting future museum exhibits and art installations.

Opening Museum Exhibits & Art Installations

Museum exhibits are listed in chronological order by opening date.

• Glory of Spain: Treasures from the Hispanic Society Museum & Library at Museum of Fine Arts, Houston | Sunday, March 1 – Spanning more than 4,000 years of Hispanic art and culture, this exhibition highlights works from antiquity to the early 20th century out of Spain, Portugal, Latin America, and the Phillippines through paintings, drawings, sculpture, illuminated manuscripts, maps, porcelains and ceramics, and more.
• Ron S. Levy at The Jung Center | Tuesday, March 3 | FREE – A fine art landscape photographer, Ron S. Levy specializes in night photography employing a technique called light painting, where beams of light selectively “paint” the landscape during very long exposures, revealing the otherworldly potential of common scenes.
• Slowed and Throwed: Records of the City Through Mutated Lenses at Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston | Friday, March 6 | FREE – Revolving around the legacy of the late Houston legend, DJ Screw, this interdisciplinary exhibition examines the creative process of DJ Screw, his contribution to rap, and assembles a field of artists that appropriate mash-up, collage, and slow down time to emphasize how remixing of “sampled” materials is a radical aesthetic act utilized by both artists and musicians.
• Tools of Revolution: Fashion Photography and Activism at Houston Center for Photography | Friday, March 6 | FREE – Centered on the work of Harlem-based Civil Rights activist and photographer Kwame Brathwaite, this exhibition brings in three young artists that similarly work at the nexus of fashion, activism, and photography in New York, to show how photography is a utility and fashion is a tool to expand not only our views but also our values.
• Daniel Kramer: Giddy Up!! A Decade of Documenting the Houston Rodeo at Art Car Museum | Saturday, March 7 | FREE – Participating in FotoFest 2020, the Art Car Museum presents an exhibition of award-winning photographer Daniel Kramer’s work detailing various aspects of the Houston Rodeo since 2007.
• Mostly Water, Some Rock by Larry Garmezy at Archway Gallery | Saturday, March 7 | FREE – Building on his early adventures in life as a geologist, Larry Garmezy’s photography observes and captures the unique and subtle patterns and textures hidden in the details of nature. This exhibition chronicles what he finds intellectually and visually intriguing in the natural world, capturing unusual impressions and abstractions of the visual landscape.
• The Writing on the Wall by Alice Leora Briggs at Art League Houston | Friday, March 13 | FREE – This exhibition displays recent works from the Tuscon-based artist that address immigration and border politics in the city of Juárez, featuring visual artwork created by Briggs in conjunction with her projects with Juárez reporter and photojournalist Julián Cardona.
• Hatsubon by Tomiko Jones at Art League Houston | Friday, March 13 | FREE – A memorial to the artist’s father, this body of work examines cultural customs, design, and materials through the ritual ceremony of hatsubon, which marks the first anniversary of a loved one’s death.
• The Book Smugglers: Partisans, Poets, and the Race to Save Jewish Treasures from the Nazis at Holocaust Museum Houston | Friday, March 13 – Consisting of approximately 100 artifacts and reproductions on display, this exhibition tells the true story of how ghetto residents rescued thousands of rare books and manuscripts by hiding them on their persons, burying them in bunkers and smuggling them across borders. Ultimately, it asks the viewer the underlying question, “Would you risk your life to save a book?”
• No Man’s Land at Station Museum of Contemporary Art | Saturday, March 14 | FREE – This group exhibition features work from artists around the world, reflecting on the legacy of colonialism and intervention, particularly how it relates to migration and diaspora. In addition, it examines how many of today’s refugee crises, whether driven by conflict, climate or economic opportunity, can be traced back to colonial imposition.

Closing Museum Exhibits & Art Installations

Read more about the following exhibits and catch your last chance to see other ongoing exhibitions in our Current Museum Exhibits & Art Installations Guide.

Museum exhibits are listed in chronological order of closing date.

• There is Another Garden at Archway Gallery | Thursday, March 5 | FREE – Relating how the plant world and human world share balance and harmony, as well as opposition and contradiction, artists Sherry Tseng Hill and Nathan Hill bring their works of mosaic tiles, paint, and other materials to emphasize this duality.
• Gareth Long: Kidnappers Foil at Blaffer Art Museum | Saturday, March 14 | FREE – In this immersive moving image installation, artist Gareth Long dives into the social, cultural, and media histories of amateur American filmmaking with simultaneous projections of existing copies of Texan filmmaker Melton Barker’s work through its various mediums.
• Paul Mpagi Sepuya at Blaffer Art Museum | Saturday, March 14 | FREE – The first major museum survey of contemporary artist Paul Mpagi Sepuya traces his work across the last 13 years, exploring his deconstruction of traditional portraiture through layering, fragmentation, and the perspective of the black, queer gaze.
• Mariam Ghani: What We Left Unfinished at Blaffer Art Museum | Saturday, March 14 | FREE – The Afghan-American artist explores how otherwise abstract political policy becomes manifest in people and places in the Middle East, Europe, and North America. In this exhibition, the artist presents five unfinished Afghan feature films shot between 1978 and 1991. 
• Collection Close-Up: Of Heaven and Earth at The Menil Collection | Sunday, March 15 | FREE – The Menil Collection surveys the representation of birds in the history of art since the third millenium BCE by highlighting pieces of its permanent collection, including paintings, sculptures, and works on paper from around the world.
• Geoff Winningham: Changing Houston at Moody Center for the Arts | Tuesday, March 17 | FREE – With the support of a 2018 Houston Arts Alliance grant, Rice University professor of visual arts Geoff Winningham presents a set of photographs that document changing elements of Houston and the interaction of both the natural and man-made landscape of the city.
• Garrett Bradley: American Rhapsody at Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston | Sunday, March 22 | FREE – The first solo museum presentation of the New Orleans-based artist and filmmaker, CAMH will exhibit new and recent films and videos by the artist, addressing themes such as race, class, familial relationships, social justice, southern culture, and the history of film in the United States. 
• Norman Rockwell: American Freedom at Museum of Fine Arts, Houston | Sunday, March 22 – MFAH hosts the first comprehensive exhibition devoted to the iconic Norman Rockwell paintings of the Four Freedoms as outlined by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt: Freedom of Speech, Freedom of Worship, Freedom from Fear, and Freedom from Want.
• Stonehenge: Ancient Mysteries and Modern Discoveries at Houston Museum of Natural Science | Sunday, March 22 – Explore the ancient mysterious formation of these massive stones with a look at scientific research, hundreds of original artifacts (many of which make their U.S. debut), and modern discoveries.

• In Residence: 12th Edition at Houston Center for Contemporary Craft | Sunday, March 22 | FREE – Celebrating the Artist Residency Program at HCCC, this 12th edition of the showcase includes a varied range of artists that embrace change, diversity, and openness in their explorations. Featured artists include Antonius-Tín Bui, Zoe Gross, Heather L. Johnson, Eunsil Leem, Joyce Lin, Robert Raphael, Jared Theis, and Meg Wachs.
• Escaping Earth: The Kinetic Work of Casey Curran at Houston Center for Contemporary Craft | Sunday, March 22 | FREE – Curran’s first solo exhibition outside of Washington State, Escaping Earth presents kinetic sculptures that reflect the complexities found within nature, art, and architecture. In addition, asteroid paintings and installations explore the haunting beauty of human innovation and its aftermath.
• Drawn to the Work: Illustration and Craft in Conversation at Houston Center for Contemporary Craft | Sunday, March 22 | FREE – Collecting the works of Aurélie Guillaume, Chenlu Hou, and Aya Kakeda, this exhibition of traditional and digital illustrations alongside works in craft materials explores the intersection of these artistic disciplines, as well as conveying unique stories within the expressive works.
• Ron S. Levy at The Jung Center | Saturday, March 28 | FREE – A fine art landscape photographer, Ron S. Levy specializes in night photography employing a technique called light painting, where beams of light selectively “paint” the landscape during very long exposures, revealing the otherworldly potential of common scenes.
• The Art of the Brick at Houston Museum of Natural Science | Sunday, March 29 – Artist Nathan Sawaya transforms the playful LEGO brick into a sophisticated art form, with original sculptures and re-imagined versions of famous masterpieces like Van Gogh’s Starry Night and Leonardo Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa.
• Form is Emptiness, Emptiness is Form: Works by Miya Ando at Asia Society Texas Center | Sunday, March 29 – Inspired by the important Buddhist text known as the Heart Sutra, artist Miya Ando exhibits a site-specific work that responds to the unique Asia Society Texas Center building, with references to elemental materials such as metal, light, water, and wood.
• Virginia Lee Montgomery: Sky Loop at Lawndale Art Center | Sunday, March 29 | FREE – Exploring a new artistic direction, Virginia Lee Montgomery introduces a multi-disciplinary project that presents a rigorous and metaphysical analysis of Hurrican Harvey. The filmmaker utilizes archival footage, footage shot of Harvey as she weathered the storm with her mother, and footage shot from her studio and alongside Buffalo Bayou.
• Shawne Major: Folie à Deux at Lawndale Art Center | Sunday, March 29 | FREE – The mixed-media collages of Shawne Major reflect the “interior world of intensely codependent relationships” with colorful overlapping layers of objects that include ropes, holiday lights, and charger cables among other materials. 
• Kaisu Koski: Rehearsals for Empathy at Lawndale Art Center | Sunday, March 29 | FREE – A series of films portray the ways that medical students practice breaking bad news to standardized patients that react according to three distinct characters with repertoires of responses. The work explores the tension between highly structured simulation governed by clinical protocols and checklists, with the deeply human and authentic responses it seeks to simulate.

Read more about these and catch your last chance to see other ongoing exhibitions in our Current Museum Exhibits & Art Installations Guide.