Houston welcomes lots of fun new art shows this month, including Lawndale’s annual “Big Show.” The Asia Society invites people on a scavenger hunt, and Sawyer Yards welcomes art selfies. After a lull during campus renovations, the place for innovative and provocative art at the University of Houston, the Blaffer Art Museum, opens three new exhibitions. Meanwhile, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston travels into a beautiful, luxurious past and into a mind-bending AI future as it celebrates some new acquisitions.

“The Big Show” at Lawndale Art Center (now through August 2)
One of Houston's favorite annual shows opens this month, as Lawndale once more puts local artists in the spotlight. As is tradition, this group exhibition features new work by artists practicing within a 100-mile radius of Lawndale. This year’s expert juror is Dr. Phillip A. Townsend, curator of art at the University of Texas’ Art Galleries at Black Studies (AGBS). Townsend has selected 88 works by 77 artists from nearly a thousand entries.

Naming this 2025 Big Show “Between Lines and Faces,” Townsend chose art that "explores the intersection of three seemingly disparate elements: text, portraiture, and the mundane. When woven together, these themes reveal profound insights into the human condition and the society we inhabit.

“Be the Art: The Silos Selfie Experience” at Sawyer Yards (now through August 9)
Here’s one with art created for all the Instagram/TikTok influencers out there. The artists at the Silos have been prompted to display large-scale, nearly immersive works, as an invitation for people to photograph them alone or to take selfies with them. Whether created as a painting, drawing, print, sculpture, or mixed media, these works are camera ready and willing to share screen time with a visitor's face. Each artwork also features a statement from the artist, providing some insights into the inspirations behind their choices in media, color, composition, and narrative.

“a way to mend” at Blaffer Art Museum (now through September 27)
Art heals at this new group exhibition showcasing 19 Gulf Coast artists whose work explores recovery, health, and restoration in mental, physical, or spiritual forms. These pieces also find a balance between landscapes and abstraction images. Our region is also a commonality in the work, as the Blaffer preview description of the exhibition notes that these artists find the Gulf Coast as a place of “resilience, transformation, and repair.” Along with visual artworks, the exhibition also features companion essays and poems by five authors who composed written work especially for the exhibition.

“¡Cuidado!” at Blaffer Art Museum (now through September 27)
This video installation and sculpture exhibition from multidisciplinary artists X Arriaga Cuellar and Adán Vallecillo also contemplate life and death but with a sharp focus on healthcare workers, especially those from Latin America who came to the U.S. to act as caregivers for the elderly. “¡Cuidado!” combines a video installation of performance work, centering on migrant caregivers from Honduras, with audio and sculptural pieces that represent different modalities of care. Scheduled live performances will also engage with these sculptures. According to the artists, the exhibition serves as a tribute to the Honduran immigrants, including Vallecillo’s sister, Mabel, who have dedicated their lives to this dignified and essential caregiving.

“Saif Azzuz: Keet Hegehlpa’ (the water is rising)” at Blaffer Art Museum (now through December 20)
In his first museum exhibition, award-winning California artist Saif Azzuz brings together installations, paintings, and assemblage pieces that examine themes of privatization of land, water, and natural resources. Some of these works will juxtapose 19th century artifacts – like old Allen Brothers advertisements to sell land around Buffalo Bayou — with historical references to indigenous western Gulf Coast cultures such as the Karankawa and Akokisa peoples. The show will include additional artwork from Azzuz’s family members, including Lulu Thrower, Elizabeth Azzuz, Viola Azzuz, Moya Azzuz, and Colleen Colegrove, all embracing ecological messages.

“Diamonds That Fall from the Treetop” at SANMAN Studios (June 14-July 26)
Houston-born multidisciplinary artist and curator Robert Leroy Hodge is most known for his award-winning, layered collage work. But with this mini-retrospective of selected works straight from his studio, art lovers will get to experience never-before-seen paintings, sculptures, and even musical compositions by Hodge.

“Diamonds” marks the first collaboration between the artist and SANMAN and High Hope Studios, and it's intended to demonstrate a shared commitment to creative excellence, cultural memory, and community-building. With this significant collaboration in mind, SANMAN will also offer free programing around the exhibition rooted in Black joy, sound culture, and community connection.

“From India to the World: Textiles from the Parpia Collections" at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (June 22–September 14)
The exhibition will give visitors their first look at 67 of the 187 pieces the MFAH acquired from the Banoo and Jeevak Parpia Collection, considered one of the most significant holdings of Indian textiles in private hands outside of India. “From India to the World” will give museum visitors insight into the rich history of these silk, muslin, embroideries and vivid tie-dyes created and woven in India. The exhibition also explores the distinctions between textiles made for the Indian market and fabric exported all over the world.

“The Parpia textile collection is a pivotal addition to our collections,” said MFAH director Gary Tinterow. “Showcasing both trade and domestic textiles from India, it represents over 40 years of dedicated collecting by Banoo and Jeevak Parpia, who have assembled one of the foremost private collections of this material globally. The Parpias’ focus on singular works exemplifying traditional forms and techniques offers a comprehensive view of Indian textile history. With this acquisition, the MFAH collection now ranks among the top public Indian textile collections outside of India.”

“Memory Palace” at Asia Society (June 25-October 12)
Find the joy in discovery with this new exhibition of contemporary sculpture from Japanese artist Umico Niwa, whose work has been presented and celebrated in museums and galleries around the world. Resembling flower creatures or nymphs, the delicate Daphnes figures seem to be at play and invite visitors to imagine their own stories for the creations.

The Asia Society notes that “Memory Palace” draws on Japanese traditions of animism and ancestral reverence but resists easy categorization. Spread across the Asia Society space, the Daphnes call us to an art adventure, as we wander into this “Memory Palace” game of hide and seek.

“Anicka Yi: Karmic Debt” at Museum of Fine Arts (June 29–September 7)
Science, technology, and creativity meet in this exhibition at the MFAH. For the latest in the museum's series of immersive summer shows, Anicka Yi, a Seoul-born, New York-based art innovator, stretches the boundaries of art, science, and maybe even mortality in her work, taking visitors beyond time and space with two mind-expanding installations.

The first section will consist of five of Yi’s large scale, animatronic “Radiolaria” sculptures that resemble giant living cells. The sculptures will be installed so they seem to float within the gallery, as if it were inside a liquid environment. The second installation, the 16-minute video “Each Branch Of Coral Holds Up the Light Of the Moon” is the first work created by Yi using Emptiness, a software system/project created in collaboration with her studio and a team of engineers. Essentially, Emptiness is an AI algorithm trained on Yi’s work that might be capable of producing new Yi-style visionary video pieces even beyond her lifespan.

“Anicka Yi shows us that it is possible to use AI systems to express our most human concerns, as she invites viewers to consider our place in ever-evolving cycles of creation and change,” said MFAH director Gary Tinterow.

  

Photo by Sun Shi

The Museum of Fine Arts Houston presents “Anicka Yi: Karmic Debt” (Anicka Yi / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Courtesy of theartist and Gladstone Gallery).