best January art

8 museum and gallery openings no Houston art lover should miss

Houston art organizations must have made a resolution to bring us a dynamic variety of art for 2025, because the city's galleries have museums are displaying art for every taste this month. From British landscapes to animals in motion to the art of Kimono design to a giant of the Abstract Expressionism movement, the diversity of exhibitions will astound.

Read on for this month's best bets, and don't miss CultureMap's guide to January's best theatrical productions.

Winter Exhibitions at Box13 ArtSpace (January 10-Febrary 8)
The artist-run nonprofit organization opens three contemplative solo shows this month for a colorful variety of art. Peter Broz’s "Out of Touch in the Wild” is a collection of two-dimensional works that explore the fine line between fear and excitement and how those feelings coincide with our experiences in nature. Inspired by Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, artist Molly Margaret Sydnor’s vibrant installation “After the Rain Part I” takes the form of a large scale intricate weaving. Also opening is Michael Guerra Foerster’s “Fries,” an exhibition of ceramic pieces that represent the artist’s wrestling with concepts of identity and self actualization.

“Bumin Kim: Lingering Light” at Anya Tish Gallery (January 10-February 22)
This solo exhibition by Korean-born, Texas-based artist Bumin Kim will showcase her signature thread paintings that redefine the traditional concept of painting. In these works, thread becomes the brushstrokes of the images, and the flat surface transcends into three-dimensional space. Kim believes that by repurposing thread as a tool of expression, her work can capture the power, elegance, and versatility of painting, embracing the transformative power of materiality to challenge what a painting can be.

“Object Impermanence” at Koslov Larsen (January 10-February 28)
This group show featuring the works of Rosalba Breazeale, Julián Chams, and Amber Toplisek explores the art object as artifact. Viewers might think of these works as tools for time-traveling, reaching back into the past and sustaining into the future. An artifact serves as a physical mark of the maker having existed in time, a testament to the perseverance of their legacy. Each handmade artifact holds personal memories as well as collective memories. Taken together, the show asks the question: what do we choose to preserve as part of our lineage?

“Picturing Nature: The Stuart Collection of 18th- and 19th-Century British Landscapes and Beyond” at Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (January 12-July 6)
Since 2015 the MFAH has grown a small selection of 18th and 19th century British landscape artworks into a a sizable and esteemed collection thanks to Houstonian Francita Stuart Koelsch Ulmer, who established the Stuart Collection in memory of her parents, Robert Cummins Stuart and Frances Wells Stuart. Now Houston art lovers will get an in-depth view into this expansive collection with the opening of this homegrown exhibition. The show will feature over 70 watercolors, drawings, prints, and oil sketches by John Constable and J.M.W. Turner. It also includes other artists whose work exemplifies the flowering of British landscape drawing, including Paul Sandby, Thomas Gainsborough, Richard Wilson, John Robert Cozens, and Samuel Palmer.

“Francita Stuart Koelsch Ulmer’s family is truly a Texas legacy, with 200 years of history here. Her great-grandmother was a member of the founding organization of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston in the 1920s,” describes MFAH director, Gary Tinterow, “Francita was captivated by the beauty of England many years ago, inheriting a John Constable oil sketch of the River Stour from her grandmother. We are so grateful to Francita for honoring the Museum by funding these extraordinary acquisitions in tribute to her parents.”

“Stenciled Elegance: Ise Katagami and the Art of Kimono Design” at Asia Society (January 23-April 27)
Explore the exquisite art of Japanese kimono creation in this rare exhibition. “Stenciled Elegance” will give visitors insight into the essential role of Ise Katagami, the thousand-year art form of using intricate paper stencils to adorn kimono with beautiful design themes like flora, water, and geometric patterns. Named after the Ise region in Japan, Ise Katagami are made by skilled artisans who slice, cut, and incise extraordinarily fine patterns into paper by hand. The exhibition will feature 25 Ise Katagami stencils loaned by the Yasuhiko and Akemi Saitoh Foundation in order to highlight the sophistication and precision of traditional Japanese crafts as a true art form.

“Breath(e): Toward Climate and Social Justice” at Rice Moody Center for the Arts (January 24-May 10)
Climate, equity, social justice, and art intersect in this provocative and timely exhibition. First curated for the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, the exhibition features a renowned array of national and international artists. As the exhibition moves to the Moody, it will expand its breadth to focus on art that explores environmental justice for the Gulf Coast region.

Highlights of this Gulf Coast focus include: a two-channel video centered on Houston from interdisciplinary artist Cannupa Hanska Luger; a Houston-themed sculpture made of PET (Polyethylene terephthalate) plastics by Xin Liu, artist-in-residence at Rice University’s Houston Asian American Archive; and community workshops led by Brandon Ballengée, whose featured works address the impact of the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill on native species in the Gulf of Mexico.

“As a space dedicated to the intersection of art and ideas, we’re excited to present this multifaceted exploration of one of the most critical issues of our time, through the lens of contemporary artists who are deeply engaged with our current environmental and social challenges,” said Moody Center director Alison Weaver.

“Joe Overstreet: Taking Flight” at Menil Collection (January 24-July 13)
This first major museum exhibition in nearly 30 years of the great Abstract Expressionist, Joe Overstreet’s work is making some national art media’s must-see lists. Overstreet stood at the forefront of 20th century artists who sought to intertwine abstract art and social politics, and this exhibition examines Overstreet’s use of abstraction in his art to explore ideas of freedom and the Black experience in the United States. Organized chronologically, “Taking Flight” features Overstreet’s landmark “Flight Pattern” series of radially suspended paintings from the early 1970s, alongside crucial bodies of work that preceded and followed them. Look for significant pieces on loan from United States museums and private collections, as well as major paintings from the estate that have rarely been on view.

“John and Dominique de Menil’s support of the artist began in the early 1970s when a painting was commissioned by him for an exhibition about the African American experience that the couple sponsored in Houston, Texas,” recounts Menil Collection director Rebecca Rabinow. “Soon after, they purchased two of Overstreet’s Flight Pattern works and invited him back to Houston for a solo show. Now, some 50 years later, the Menil Collection looks forward to sharing his work with a new generation of visitors.”

“Reclaimed Creations” at The Health Museum (January 25, 2025-January 4, 2026)
Internationally acclaimed artist Sayaka Ganz uses discarded plastic objects as her medium to sculpt wondrous figurative pieces and large-scale installations with a special focus on animals in motion. As appropriate for an exhibition at the Health Museum, the show will not just feature these remarkable pieces but also teach visitors about the science of plastic and its impact on our world. Comparing her use of plastic material as brush strokes on a canvas, Ganz describes her work as “3D impressionist.” Ganz makes it a practice to only work with previously used plastic items, buying material from thrift stores or using donations given to her from family and friends.

“My work is about perceiving harmony, even in situations that appear chaotic from the inside,” explains Ganz. “When observing my sculptures up close, one might see gaps, holes, and items being held on only by small points; step away, however, and the sculptures reveal the harmony created when the objects are aligned to the same general direction.”

$\u200bThe Health Museum presents \u201cReclaimed Creations\u201d$

Photo courtesy of The Health Museum

The Health Museum presents “Reclaimed Creations.”

museums openings visual-art

A Roman Holiday (Season)

All roads lead to Houston museum's blockbuster exhibit of Imperial Rome

Photo courtesy of Museum of Fine Arts, Houston

The Museum of Fine Arts Houston presents "Art and Life in Imperial Rome: Trajan and His Times" ("Statue of Trajan" Minturno, Italy, 2nd century, marble, National Archaeological Museum, Naples)

Houston's holiday season will have a distinctly Roman feeling this year, as the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston is bringing the glory of the Gladiator era to Texas. On November 2, 2025 through January 25, 2026 the MFAH presents the monumental new exhibition “Art and Life in Imperial Rome: Trajan and His Times.”

Featuring 160 objects of antiquity, including marble sculptures, frescoes, mosaics, delicate glass vessels, and exquisite bronze artifacts, the exhibition will transport visitors back in time to the Roman Empire during a flowering of art and architecture. The MFAH partnered with the Saint Louis Art Museum to organize the exhibition, which will showcase many pieces that have never been on view in the U.S.

While Emperor Trajan might not be the most famous — or in some cases, most infamous — of the Roman emperors, he ruled between 98 and 117 C.E. during the empire’s height and was the second of the so-called “Five Good Emperors” of the Nerva-Antonine dynasty. He was also the first emperor born outside of present-day Italy, in what is now Andalusia, Spain. During his reign, he granted citizenship and rights to some peoples from conquered lands. The exhibition will explore how this time period expanded what it meant to be a Roman and how art reflected Rome’s power and promoted the empire’s values and ideals.

$\u200bThe Museum of Fine Arts Houston presents "Art and Life in Imperial Rome: Trajan and His Times"$

Photo courtesy of Museum of Fine Arts, Houston

The Museum of Fine Arts Houston presents "Art and Life in Imperial Rome: Trajan and His Times" ("Statue of Trajan" Minturno, Italy, 2nd century, marble, National Archaeological Museum, Naples)

From statues of prominent men and women of the era, including Trajan, to vivid frescoes and furnishing from the villas of Pompeii, the objects in the exhibition will tell fascinating cultural and political stories of life in imperial Rome. To add context to the artworks and objects of antiquity, the MFAH will recreate a section of Trajan’s Column, which was a towering pillar with a spiraling narrative frieze, one of the few monumental sculptures to have survived the fall of Rome.

“Art and Life in Imperial Rome: Trajan and His Times” brings such a wealth of objects to Houston thanks to unprecedented loans from the renowned antiquities collections of Italian museums including Museo Nazionale Romano, the Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Napoli, the Parco Archeologico di Ostia, and the Musei Vaticani. It would would likely take months of travel across Italy to see this much art.

“This is truly a rare opportunity for U.S. audiences to experience spectacular objects from this glorious era of the Roman Empire,” said Gary Tinterow, director and Margaret Alkek Williams chair of the MFAH, in a statement. “We are enormously grateful to our colleagues in Rome, Naples, and Vatican City for lending these treasures to us and broadening the appreciation of Italy’s cultural heritage.”

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