H-Town Proud

See work by these Houston-based artists at massive contemporary art fair

The Untitled Art Fair returns to the George R. Brown Convention Center this weekend (Friday, October 2-Sunday, October 4) following the show’s incredible Houston premier last fall. With an expanded roster of 98 galleries from 20 countries and territories, this year’s edition builds on the momentum of 2025 with an ambitious citywide program of Special Projects, prizes, live podcast panels, and community partnerships that speak to Houston’s increasingly vital role in contemporary art.

While the fair specializes in international contemporary art that draws both casual admirers and major collectors looking for long term investments, Untitled is arguably the only fair of its magnitude that platforms local artists, foundations, charity, and non-profit organizations as well.

That being said, if the highly-anticipated Affordable Art Fair sounds more appealing from a financial perspective, fret not. Untitled has something for everyone, and a plethora of ways to support the local Houston arts community while taking in the more monumental works on display. If nothing else, the fashion and people watching are worth a stroll.

On the show floor, 11 Special Projects offer artists, galleries, and institutional partners the opportunity to realize site-specific work alongside the fair’s booth exhibitors.

Highlights

Dave Muller’s Record Pavilion 2.0 (2026), presented by Meliksetian | Briggs and the Landing. First staged in Los Angeles in 2022, this fully operational, walk-in record store is assembled from Muller’s own collection, complete with sound system, paintings, and ephemera.

Erina Libertad's Duet (2026), with Main sector exhibitor Hannah Sloan, transforms a stretch of the fair into an opportunity for an impromptu dance between strangers.

Josh Callaghan’s Big Rig (2026) exhibited by Main sector exhibitor Night Gallery, a new main sector gallery, recasts wheelchairs as icons of American mobility while a series of densely layered, kaleidoscopic paintings inspired by King Nobuyoshi Godwin’s “synaesthesia” are on display in The Artist Is Having a Good Day (2026) from SAGE Studio & Gallery.

Houston Specific Projects

Houston itself remains the connective tissue of this year’s programming, with an array of presentations foregrounding the artists, local histories, and communities that have shaped the city’s cultural landscape.

The Floyd Newsum Jr. Art Estate expands The Journey Never Ends, a 2005 painting by the late artist, with a living “artchive” tracing his four-decade influence on generations of Houstonians. The installation unfolds over three acts, including a live video feed, Untitled Voyage (2026), connecting a traveling iteration of the project with its presentation at the fair.

Reconstructing historical LGBTQIA+ spaces and sites of the queer community in Houston, Nick Vaughan and Jake Margolin's Town Meeting 1978–2028 (2026) is a monumental drawing and performance lecture exhibited by McClain Gallery.

Reynier Leyva Novo's Blue Bones (2026), a public art project presented by PAC Public, unfolds through a community archive in the neighborhood of the Third Ward. For the presentation, Novo covers images and objects in blue paint, shifting their function to a material evidence of the survival, loss, and urban change in the Third Ward.

In The Iconic Portrait Strand (Houston), an on-going series of portraits from 2008-2026, Houston-based artist Nestor Topchy renders egg-tempera and gold-leaf portraits of Houstonians in the tradition of Byzantine icons. Topchy’s presentation, with Josh Pazda Hiram Butler, will grow during the run of the fair through live portrait sittings.

Estefania Puerta's The Crowd (2026) is a reflective figurative sculpture built from cast forms and photographs taken in Rome and Colombia, and presented by the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston as part of the inaugural CAMH Commission Prize awarded to the artist at the inaugural edition of the fair.

Houston-based artist JooYoung Choi’s sculptural installation, WE CAN MAKE IT IF WE TRY, The Journey of Poundcake Man and Emma Poundcake Girl (2024), showcased by Inman Gallery, explores themes of identity, belonging, trauma, and resilience inspired by the artist’s childhood memories.

Houston legend Mark Flood stages Daily Flood (2026), a lived-in artist’s studio/private viewing room, with paintings stacked on the floor, leaned against walls, and set among furniture and found objects.

Houston Artist Market

The Houston Artist Market returns for its second year, expanding its reach beyond the city to showcase artists, publishers, collectives, and cultural organizations from across Texas. Once again curated by Adam Marnie, editor of F Magazine and a Nest exhibitor at the fair, the initiative reflects Untitled Art’s broader commitment to foster regional cultural ecosystems, providing a retail-style platform alongside the fair's international roster. This year's edition brings together 12 presentations, including two collaborative booths.

“I’m really excited to be bringing the Artist Market back to Untitled Art, Houston for its second, expanded edition,” says Marnie. “For me, the real strength of the Artist Market is that it represents a vital collection of the artist-run organizations creating community and connection on the ground in Greater Houston and beyond.”

Houston and Texas Highlights

Basket Books & Art
An independent Montrose bookstore with an upstairs contemporary art gallery that opened in 2022, Basket specializes in contemporary art, literature, poetry, and criticism, while also presenting exhibitions, readings, book launches, conversations, and book clubs.

Bill’s Junk
Houston artist Bill Davenport’s eccentric collision of an art project, thrift shop, and salvage operation. The original Heights storefront operated from 2008 to 2022, but Davenport has continued Bill’s Junk through Instagram, pop-ups, and special events. Less a conventional store than an extension of Davenport’s artistic practice, the collection is built around discarded objects, handmade work, oddities, and Houston cultural ephemera.

CHEERLEADER | Dallas
An artist-run contemporary gallery founded by Dallas-born artist and curator Brent Birnbaum, CHEERLEADER opened in 2025 in the Cedars neighborhood and presents local and national artists in an unconventional, DIY setting.

East Side Pot Shop | Austin
A ceramics studio and community pottery operation offering handmade functional and decorative ceramics, the shop represents the craft and artist-made retail side of the market rather than operating as a traditional commercial gallery.

Friends Gallery
A community-run gallery and cooperative founded in 2024, the gallery centers BIPOC, transgender, queer, local, and emerging artists, approaching art as a means of community building, cultural exchange, organizing, and political education.

Jardín
Isabel Wilson’s Montrose fashion, art, and design shop produces limited-run clothing in Houston using deadstock fabrics and presents contemporary art exhibitions, art advisory and installation services, and vintage and design pop-ups.

MORTADELLA | Fort Worth
A nomadic curatorial and publishing project founded in 2024 by Jesse Morgan Barnett and Evie Marie Bishop. Rather than maintaining a permanent gallery, MORTADELLA organizes exhibitions, publications, and collaborative projects in changing locations.

The Orange Show Center for Visionary Art
The Orange Show preserves and promotes self-taught, folk, and visionary art. Its programs and properties include The Orange Show Monument, the Beer Can House, Smither Park, and the Houston Art Car Parade, with the 40th annual parade coming up in 2027. At the Artist Market, it represents one of Houston’s most distinctive and nationally recognizable alternative-art institutions.

PICNIC Curatorial Projects | Galveston
Founded by Gregory Ruppe and Alden Pinnell, PICNIC began in 2020 as a surf brand, research laboratory, and curatorial platform; the nonprofit followed in 2021. It supports exhibitions, performances, collaborations, research, publications, and other cultural projects.

The Reading Room HTX
Founded in 2023 by Amarie Gipson, this independent reference library is devoted to Black art and culture. Its browse-only collection contains more than 700 books and exhibition catalogues. The Reading Room also organizes talks, screenings, listening sessions, workshops, and teach-ins and has a semi-permanent home inside SANMAN Studios.

SANMAN Studios
A Black-owned Houston creative hub providing studio, exhibition, event, and community space, SANMAN supports artists, designers, musicians, and other creative practitioners and is also home to The Reading Room HTX.

St. Agnes Academy Visual Arts
Houston’s Catholic college-preparatory school for young women will bring student-created work into the fair and give young artists direct exposure to Houston’s contemporary art community.

Stinson House
Founded and run by Nick Stinson, this intimate home gallery in Houston’s Washington Terrace/Third Ward area provides artists at different career stages with a warm, domestic exhibition setting. Stinson curates thoughtful contemporary exhibitions and publishes Daddy Issues, a Houston personal-ads zine.

Zine Fest Houston
A free, all-ages festival and year-round organization supporting zines, mini-comics, self-published books, and alternative and underground DIY media. Beyond its annual festival, Zine Fest Houston offers educational programs, publications, grants, and paid opportunities intended to support emerging artists and amplify marginalized voices.

Photo by Emily Cotton

JooYoung Choi's We Can Make It If We Try: The Journey of Poundcake Man and Emma Poundcake Girl, presented by Inman Gallery.

Best November Art

10 must-see art openings and festivals happening in Houston this month

Image courtesy of Moon Papas

Conceptual Rendering of "Chromatic Forest" at Discovery Green

A diverse roster of art shows and exhibitions open in Houston this month. Public outdoor murals and sculptures appear amid the city's landscape, while some big blockbuster shows open at Houston's major art institutions. And for those thinking about holiday gift giving, November festivals bring many opportunities to purchase fantastic artworks and crafts.

Big Walls Big Dreams Mural Festival throughout the city (painting period now through November 15)
Look for even more massive murals across Houston, as this festival paints its ways through the city for the fifth year. This selection of acclaimed local, national, and international artists will definitely get around, as they bring color and images to outdoor walls in East Aldine, the Arts District, the East End, the Heights, Midtown, Southeast District, the Energy Corridor, and Five Corners.

The lineup includes Houston artists Cease Martinez, Anat Ronen, Colors, and Tra' Slaughter, along with visiting artists including Odeith (Lisbon), whose anamorphic murals appear to float off the wall. New Mexico artist Drew Merritt will create the largest painting of the festival, a 150-foot wall in the Heights. Twelve of the murals will be painted in East Aldine, as the East Aldine District is celebrating its 25 year anniversary with the Aldine Mural Route, a program sponsoring 25 murals for 25 years.

“The Intergalactic Liberation Bureau” at Lawndale (now through December 19)
Houston theater lovers will likely know Candice D’Meza from her stellar performances on stages across the city, but D’Meza has leaned into film and multidisciplinary performance, storytelling, and visual art in recent years. This new exhibition at Lawndale certainly embraces that “multi” dimensionality of D’Meza’s work, as it holds elements of participatory performance, narrative, installation, film, and sound.

Created as a Quantum Control Room helmed by the character of Zeta, a Cosmic File Keeper, “Intergalactic Liberation Bureau” assembles fragmented bureaucratic forms and mundane office trivialities into an encounter with freedom. Drawing from African Indigenous cosmologies, maroon histories, and quantum mechanics, this Bureau of Liberation asks: What does it mean to be free?

“César A. Martínez” at Art League Houston (now through December 20)
Celebrating the work of César A. Martínez, the recent recipient of the Art League’s Lifetime Achievement Award in the Visual Arts, which honors living artists who have made an outstanding contribution to the visual arts in Texas, the exhibition features works that span the over 50 years of Martínez’s career. Emphasizing Martínez’s creative process through a diverse range of media, including painting, drawing, printmaking, collage, constructions, photography, and digital work, the exhibition includes pieces from his most renowned series: Bato/Pachuco, Mestizo, South Texas, and Serape.Through these four series, visitors can gain an understanding of the extraordinary depth and range of art created by this legendary figure in the Chicano art movement.

“Saharan Air Layer” at Art League Houston (now through December 20)
With a title that references the massive sand and dust cloud that rises from the Sahara Desert and makes its way across the Atlantic to Houston each summer, this exhibition from Jamal Cyrus, winner of Art League’s 2026 Texas Artist of the Year Award, explores the African diaspora. Cyrus has made sound and music a central part of his practice and this exhibition. “Saharan Air Layer” features collage, drawing, photography, installation, film, and performance work and traces Black American history via sound territories, with a particular emphasis on the Southern vernacular,.

“Of Light and Air: Winslow Homer from the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston” at Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (now through February 7)
One of this country’s greatest painters of outdoor life, Winslow Homer captured the nature and spirit of place. His works gave future generations a feel for New England life in the late 19th century. With works ranging from Homer’s childhood drawings to painting he made in the early 20th century, “Of Light and Air” features nearly 50 watercolors by the artist, alongside a selection of his oils, drawings, and prints.

When the MFAH calls this exhibition once in a generation, it isn't exaggerating. There’s an irony in the nature of watercolors, as they can depict light and nature with such beauty, but exposure to light for decades can also fade the colors. So while viewers in Boston might have seen selections of these works before over the years, these pieces have never been exhibited all together until now.

“This exhibition invites visitors to explore how Homer grew as a watercolor artist — and to see for themselves why he’s considered the greatest American watercolorist of the 19th century. His dazzling works burst with color and showcase techniques that were bold, inventive, and ahead of their time,” said Dr. Kaylin H. Weber, curator of American Painting and Sculpture.

International Quilt Festival at George R. Brown Convention Center (November 12-14)
This Houston born-and-bred festival is also the world’s largest quilt show. Attracting more than 35,000 visitors from all 50 states and more than 25 countries, the 2026 show will include special events and guests, including quilter and NASA Astronaut Dr. Karen Nyberg, who quilted a gravity defying block while aboard the International Space Station in 2014. Over 1,400 antique, traditional, art, and modern quilts and works of textile art will be on display, while quilters will love the 500 shopping booths offering fabrics, books, patterns, tools, sewing machines, and crafts. Festival-goers can also find 275 lectures and classes from nearly 90 top teachers.

"The Winds” at MATCH (November 13-15)
Houston multidisciplinary artist John Jenkins uses his fascination with mythology and technology as inspiration for this immersive exploration of how humans have depicted and anthropomorphized forces of nature throughout time and across cultures. Jenkins notes that for thousands of years humans and especially artists and storytellers have given names, faces, and personalities to the wind. In this exhibition, Jenkins reimagines twelve classical winds in an immersive show exploring mythology, identity, perception, and the human impulse to give form and meaning to forces we cannot directly see.

“Chromatic Forest” at Discovery Green (November 13-February 7)
If there’s even a hint of a chill in the air, it must be time for an enchanting new winter art installation at Discovery Green, and this year’s foliage will be bright, vibrant, and interactive. Created by the Houston electronic and light sculptors duo Julian Luna and Matt Fries, a.k.a. Moon Papas, this interactive geometric light “forest” will grow suspended under the magnificent and historic live oaks along the Brown Promenade side of Discovery Green. Consisting of eight, 16-foot-tall sculptures that form seemingly impossible arrangements of changing electric geometric patterns, the colors will respond and transform as people stroll along the pathway. In a playful juxtaposition, the sculptures’ hard lines and washes of dynamic color coexist with the organic lines of the trees.

Art Crawl Houston in the Downtown Warehouse District (November 21)
This 34th annual event celebrates contemporary art in all its forms — abstract, figurative, digital, performance, and more — accompanied by food, music, and family-friendly programming. Last year, Carla Bisong of Bisong Art Gallery took on the organizing of the longtime tradition after the the sad passing of one of the event’s founders, beloved artist Louise Janet Schlachter. And in 2025, artists and art lovers crawled forward and onward with new energy, so we can’t wait to see what art lies around every warehouse corner this year.

Islamic Arts Festival at Ismaili Center (November 21 and 22)
Houston's fall festival season continues as the largest Islamic arts festival in the U.S. brings together artists, scholars, performers, and visitors from across the nation for a vibrant celebration of Islamic art, culture, and heritage. A packed two days of events includes fine art exhibitions, sales of contemporary and traditional Islamic art, live demonstrations by master calligraphers and artisans, interactive workshops, and a Sufi music program. With programming and displays for the whole family, the festival will feature a myriad of artwork from 50 artists, but will also include live demonstrations on calligraphy, henna tattoos, ebru, painting, a variety of children’s art activities, and a variety of traditional food.

$\u200bConceptual Rendering of Chromatic Forest at Discovery Green$

Image courtesy of Moon Papas

Conceptual Rendering of "Chromatic Forest" at Discovery Green.

visual-art festivals openings