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Art museums and institutions throughout the Greater Houston area are opening exhibitions in the summer months of 2026, including Art League Houston, the Blaffer Art Museum, the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, the Galveston Art Center, and more.
Czech Center Museum Houston
The Czech Center Museum Houston opened Celebration Of Spirit: A Photographic Testimonial of Life, a solo exhibition by Clarice Marik Snokhous. Ms. Snokhous, perhaps best known for her arts patronage, has traveled widely and will present a portfolio of her travel photography. The exhibition will be on view through June.
Art League Houston
Art League Houston will open two exhibitions in May. Marisol Valencia, a Houston ceramicist and multimedia sculptor, will present No Longer, Not Yet, an emotionally charged installation of sculptural work based on her time as a volunteer at a migrant shelter serving women and children. Her primary materials are ixtle fiber sourced from rural communities in her native Mexico, bed linens from the migrant shelter, construction materials, and porcelain. Rather than directly addressing the political dimensions of immigration, Ms. Valencia explores the human experience of people living with uncertainty.
Honolulu artist Juvana Soliven will present Subject to Surviving, her first solo exhibition in Texas. In intricate beadwork and mixed media sculptures, Ms. Soliven confronts the subjugation of women by systems of control in Western societies. Her work analogizes medical instruments as weaponry used against women’s bodies throughout history, as a means of depriving bodily autonomy and empowered self-identity.
Both exhibitions will open with a reception on Friday, May 15, from 6 to 8 p.m., and run through Sunday, July 19. Ms. Valencia and Ms. Soliven will give an artist talk on Saturday, May 16, at 2 p.m.
Houston Center for Photography
The Houston Center for Photography will present Simon Silva: Madre Patria, a solo exhibition exploring the artist’s first visit to the Aquiles Serdán pueblo in Oaxaca, Mexico. As Mr. Silva documented his family’s time volunteering at a local festival, he saw his life growing up on Houston’s southwest side as inclusive of his Mexican heritage and Latinx life in general. Madre Patria will open on Thursday, May 21 and remain on view through Sunday, June 14.
Contemporary Arts Museum Houston
The Contemporary Arts Museum Houston (CAMH) will open Mary Ellen Carroll: How To Talk Dirty and Influence People on Friday, May 22, the first survey exhibition of this New York-based multidisciplinary artist. The show title is a reference to comedian Lenny Bruce, highlighting both artist’s and comedian’s wry humor in addressing urgent societal issues. The CAMH exhibition will span four decades of Mx. Carroll’s work in various media, presenting projects in conversation with each other in accordance with the artist’s conceptual approach. Among several ongoing projects, How To Talk Dirty and Influence People will include My Death is Pending… Because (1986-2017), a decades-long multiform project that culminated in the artist’s participation in a demolition derby as a driver.
Moody Center for the Arts
Chris Grunder
The Moody Center for the Arts at Rice University will present the first Texas exhibition of Masako Miki, a California-based artist who works in multiple media including textiles, watercolor, and public installation art. For Masako Miki: Shapeshifters, Sprites, and Spirits, the artist will create a site-specific sculptural installation populated with characters from Japanese folklore and her personal mythology.
The events reservation page for the Friday, May 29, 6 to 8 p.m. opening reception invites attendees to “Meet the cast of yōkai characters transforming the central gallery and delve deeper into Japanese folklore with a screening of the animated series GeGeGe no Kitarō.”
Houston Center for Contemporary Craft
Opening Saturday, May 30, at the Houston Center for Contemporary Craft (HCCC), Houston artist Jeff Forster will present Sanctuary for Salvage, a site-specific installation of monumental, totemic columns created using materials recycled from ceramics processes. According to the HCCC website, Forster “engages with themes of geological time and harnesses the unpredictable energy released during the [ceramic] firing process,” to evoke ruins and the cultural memory of sacred rituals that once took place within them. The exhibition, curated by Zaynab Hilal, HCCC Curatorial Fellow, will remain on view through Saturday, September 5.
Blaffer Art Museum
The Blaffer Art Museum will present its first iteration of the Artists in Research initiative launched by Laura Augusta, Director and Chief Curator, welcoming Erika Blumenfeld as artist-in-residence from Tuesday, June 2, through Saturday, August 1. During her residency period, Ms. Blumenfeld will develop Sky Stone Cycle, a new body of work charting the orbital paths of meteors through the solar system, and exploring their relationship to the formation of life on Earth. Visitors to the museum will be able to observe Ms. Blumenfeld at work in the gallery-turned-studio, in process of creating a new print edition employing ground meteorites as pigment. As quoted on the Blaffer website, Ms. Blumenfeld explained, “If stones hold memory, then meteorites that have been picked up by human hands have a particularly unique and intricate story to tell, one that spans remnant stellar chemistry, the forming and collision of planets out of pre-nebular dust, and human curiosity.”
Lawndale
From Sunday, June 12, through Saturday, August 15, Lawndale will present The Big Show 2026, the latest edition of its long-running open call juried exhibition surveying new art made within a 100-mile radius of its Houston location. Artists selected by juror Valerie Cassel Oliver, the Sydney and Frances Lewis Family Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts and former CAMH Senior Curator, will be announced in May.
Galveston Art Center
The Galveston Art Center (GAC) will open two exhibitions during the summer months, opening Saturday, June 13, and running through Sunday, August 2. Komie Kim Le: All-You-Can-Eat will feature ceramic sculpture by this self-described “‘90s kid” based in San Marcos. Ms. Kim Le references her Vietnamese-American upbringing through ceramic crab pots, baskets, and fish sauce bottles, using elements of traditional Asian pottery to reference immigrant memory via domestic objects.
The GAC will also present Jasmine Zelaya: Tropical Depression, with details forthcoming of this Houston multidisciplinary artist’s solo exhibition. The shows will open with an ArtWalk Opening Reception on Saturday, June 13, from 6 to 9 p.m., and an artist talk at 6:30 p.m.
DiverseWorks
DiverseWorks will present Jesus Benavente: NUESTROWORLD, a satirical take on the boom and bust cycles of Houston as seen through the eyes of a San Antonio-born artist now living in Brooklyn, New York. With a Spanglish title meaning “the world is ours,” Mr. Benavente will create his version of an amusement park referencing Selena’s unforgettable 1995 performance at the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo, the 1960s opening of the once-iconic Astrodome and Astroworld Park, and the arc of Texas independence from the Battle of Gonzales, where the “come and take it” motto originated, to the 1836 Battle of San Jacinto.
NUESTROWORLD will open Saturday, August 1, and remain on view through Wednesday, September 30.
[Disclaimer: Glasstire is a sponsor of Lawndale’s The Big Show 2026.]
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