Museum of Fine Arts, Houston

Established in 1900, the MFAH is the largest cultural institution in the southwest region. The Museum’s main campus is located in the heart of Houston’s Museum District, housed in the original Neoclassical museum building with modern wings, plus two newer buildings. The MFAH is now the 12th largest museum, in terms of gallery space, in the world! 

The adjacent Cullen Sculpture Garden - created by sculptor Isamu Noguchi - showcases masterworks of 20th- and 21st-century sculpture by artists including Louise Bourgeois, Dan Graham, Henri Matisse, Auguste Rodin, and David Smith.

The encyclopedic collections of the MFAH cover world cultures dating from antiquity to the present and include in-depth holdings of American art, European paintings, pre-Columbian and African gold, decorative arts and design, photography, prints and drawings, Modern and Contemporary painting and sculpture, and Latin American art. The MFAH is also home to the International Center for the Arts of the Americas (ICAA), a leading research institute for 20th-century Latin American and Latino art. 

Nearby are two MFHA house-museums. (See separate listings). Bayou Bend Collection and Gardens, located at 6003 Memorial Drive, is the MFAH house museum for American decorative arts and paintings. Rienzi, the MFAH house-museum for European decorative arts, is situated on four acres of wooded gardens in the historic River Oaks neighborhood, about five miles from the main MFAH campus and about two miles from Bayou Bend, at 1406 Kirby Drive.

Read our review of the MFAHouston here. Spoiler alert: we loved it!