From adorning high fashion to T-shirts, dishes to flags, the face and artworks of Mexican artist Frida Kahlo has become some of the most recognizable images of the 20th and 21st century. She even has her own Barbie doll.
Yet, Kahlo never had this place in our global cultural psyche when she was alive. Now, Frida: The Making of an Icon, a pioneering exhibition organized by the Museum of Fine Art, Houston, will trace Kahlo’s phenomenal rise onto the world art stage and her colossal influence on generations of later artists.
Set to debut in January 2026, Frida will showcase over 30 works by Kahlo herself. In addition, her artwork will hang amid more than 120 objects by artists from the 1970s into the 21st century who were influenced by her work. Some even co-opted and adapted her art and self-portraits to create their own.
While certainly not the first survey of Kahlo’s work, this is the first major museum exhibition to attempt a deep exploration of Kahlo’s evolution from an admired, but mostly regionally-known, painter, and artist wife of Diego Rivera at the time of her death in the 1950s to the universal icon and global brand she is today. The MFAH notes that her audience recognition and devotion rival that of legendary artists like Van Gogh and Picasso.
Conceived by MFAH curator of Latin American Art, Mari Carmen Ramírez, the show will be organized thematically with focuses on how art and cultural movements of the time influenced Kahlo's work and sense of self and how her art continues to influence us. MFAH visitors can expect galleries devoted to Kahlo’s many self-constructed identities, Surrealism influences, the 1970’s Chicano movement, and feminist activism that brought her artwork into more spaces in the U.S., as well as her “Pro-Activist Legacy” and even the “Fridamania” commodification of her life and art.
“The exhibition reveals how the different facets of Kahlo’s complex persona(lity), which she so carefully crafted and projected, were adapted again and again over her decades-long transformation into an icon,” describes Ramírez. “As a result, her image became subsumed within the desires, fears, and hopes of artists and activists who transformed it into innovative proposals that transcend their source of inspiration while commenting on pressing issues of their place and time. In exploring that process, the exhibition re- establishes Kahlo’s own identity, and asserts her persistent relevance to contemporary art as well as activism over the past 70 years.”
As anticipation builds for the early 2026 Frida: The Making of an Icon opening, expect Fridamania to sweep Houston and Texas, perhaps sparking Frida fans from all across the country on art trips to see this remarkable show. After Houston, global audiences will need to head to London’s Tate Modern for the next opportunity to view this Houston-grown exhibition.
“This Museum has been at the forefront of Latin American art since the founding in 2001 of the International Center for the Arts of the Americas,” notes MFAH director, Gary Tinterow, on the groundbreaking exhibition. “While there have been numerous Frida Kahlo exhibitions around the world since the 1970s, Mari Carmen Ramírez has leveraged the unparalleled resources of our ICAA to document and assemble a fascinating group of objects that attest to the enduring appeal of Kahlo’s art and life.”
"Frida: The Making of an Icon" will be on view January 18-May 17, 2026 at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.
