Museum of Fine Arts, Houston

With approximately 80,000 works of art, the largest part of the museum's collection lie in the areas of Italian Renaissance painting, Baroque painting, French Impressionism, photography, American and European decorative arts, African and pre-Columbian gold, American art, and post-1945 European and American painting and sculpture. Other facets of the collection include African-American art and Texas painting. Emerging collection interests of modern and contemporary Latin American art, including the artwork of many Texas Latino artists, Asian art, and Islamic art continue to strengthen the museum's collection diversity. As a result of its encyclopedic collection, the museum ranks nationally among the top ten art museums in attendance.

Collection Beginnings

Prior to the opening of the permanent museum building in 1924, George M. Dickson bequeathed to the collection its first important American and European oil paintings. In the 1930s, Houstonian Annette Finnigan began her donation of antiquities and Texas philanthropist Ima Hogg gave her collection of avant-garde European prints and drawings. Ima Hogg's gift was followed by the subsequent donations of her Southwest Native American and Frederic Remington collections during the 1940s.

Over the next two decades, gifts from prominent Houston families and foundations concentrated on European art from the fifteenth to twentieth centuries, contemporary painting and sculpture, and African, Oceanic and Pre-Columbian art. Among these are the gifts of Life Trustees Sarah Campbell Blaffer, Dominique de Menil and Alice N. Hanzsen as well as that of the Samuel H. Kress Foundation. Augmented by museum purchases, the permanent collection numbered 12,000 objects by 1970.

European Paintings

The 1944 bequest of eighty-three Renaissance paintings, sculptures and works on paper from renowned New York collectors Edith and Percy S. Straus formed the "cornerstone" of the museum's European collection, one that "fundamentally changed the scope and importance" of it and "placed the museum on the map." Prior to this gift, the European collection had only twelve paintings. Percy S. Straus, who had been advised by several leading scholars of the day, is credited with assembling one of the best private collections formed in the U.S. in the 1920s and 30s. He donated paintings by many famous European artists to the MFAH, including Fra Angelico, Sandro Botticelli, Giovanni Bellini, Rogier van der Weyden, Hans Memling, Peter Paul Rubens, and Anthony van Dyck, as well as high quality works by some anonymous artists.

The MFAH collection nearly doubled from 1970 to 1989, fueled by continued donations of art along with the advent of both accession endowment funding and corporate giving. In 1974, John and Audrey Jones Beck placed on long-term loan fifty Impressionist and Post-Impressionist masterpieces, augmenting the museum's already strong Impressionist collection. This collection would never leave the MFAH, formally entering its holdings in 1998 as a gift of Life Trustee Audrey Jones Beck. The collection is permanently displayed in the building that bears her name.

On the heels of the Cullen Foundation's funding of the MFAH's first accessions endowment in 1970, the Brown Foundation, Inc., launched a challenge grant in 1976 that would stay in effect for twenty years. It raised funds for both accessions and operational costs in landmark amounts, and providing incentive for additional community support. Also in 1976, the photography collection was established with Target Stores’ first corporate grant to the museum. In 2011 the MFAH had the sixth-largest endowment among art museums in the country.

Modern Latin America and Latino Art

In 2001, the MFAH established the International Center for the Arts of the Americas (ICAA), the leading research institute for 20th-century Latin American and Latino art. The ICAA was a pioneer in collecting, exhibiting and researching the artistic production of Latin American and Latinx communities, including artists from Mexico, Central and South America, the Caribbean, and artists of Latin American descent living and working in the United States. Through the ICAA, the MFAH helped to bring about a long-term transformation in the appreciation and understanding of Latin American and Latinx visual arts in the United States and abroad. According to Edward Sullivan, who is the deputy director of the Institute of Fine Arts in New York, the ICAA is the "premier institution internationally for the exhibition and promotion of interest in Latin American art.”

Caroline Wiess Law's 2007 gift of more than $400 million dollars jump started the museum's acquisition program, as did the enhanced space made possible by the Kinder building. According to director Gary Tinterow, “From around 2000, since the opening of the Beck Building, designed by Rafael Moneo, we had approximately 1,200 square feet devoted to 20th-century art.” With the new building, that amount approached 150,000 square feet. $60 million was utilized over 20 years to develop a Latinx collection and create the institute.

The MFAH's permanent collection totals nearly 80,000 pieces in over 300,000 square feet (28,000 m2) of exhibition space,placing it second in size to the Metropolitan Museum in the United States. The museum's collections and programs are housed in nine facilities. The Susan and Fayez S. Sarofim Campus encompasses 14 acres including seven of the facilities, with two additional facilities, Bayou Bend and Rienzi (house museums) at off site locations. The main public collections and exhibitions are in the Law, Beck, and Kinder buildings. The Law and Beck buildings have over 130,000 square feet (12,000 m2) of exhibition space.

The Susan and Fayez S. Sarofim Campus

Caroline Wiess Law Building – the original neo-classical building was designed in phases by architect William Ward Watkin. The original Caroline Wiess Law building was constructed in 1924 and the east and west wing were added in 1926.

The Robert Lee Blaffer Memorial Wing was designed by Kenneth Franzheim and opened to the public in 1953. The new construction included significant structural improvements to several existing galleries—most notably, air conditioning. Two subsequent additions, Cullinan Hall and the Brown Pavilion, designed by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe were built in 1958 and 1974 respectively. This section of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston campus is the only Mies-designed museum in the United States. The Caroline Wiess Law building provides a space in which to exhibit temporary and traveling exhibitions, as well as installations of Islamic art, Pacific Island and Australian art, Asian art, Indonesian gold artworks, and Mesoamerican and sub-Saharan African art. Of special interest is the Glassell Collection of African Gold, the largest assemblage of its kind in the world, donated by museum chairman Alfred C. Glassell Jr. The Nidhika and Pershant Mehta Arts of India is the only space in Houston dedicated exclusively to Indian Arts and Culture, though the Crow also exhibits Indian art.

Audrey Jones Beck Building – Opened to the public in 2000, the Beck Building was designed by Rafael Moneo, a Pritzker Architecture Prize Laureate. The museum Trustees elected to name the building after Audrey Jones Beck in honor of the large collection she had donated to the museum several decades prior. In addition to traveling exhibitions and rotating temporary shows of photography, prints and drawings on the lower levels, the building displays the permanent collections of antiquities, European, and American art up to 1900, including the Impressionist.