The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston is turning its permanent collection into the headline act this fall. A Century of Modern Art is now on view through January 25, 2027, tracing a hundred years of modern creativity from John Singer Sargent to Cy Twombly in one sweeping, walk-through story.
Drawn entirely from the MFAH’s own holdings, the exhibition is organized as a procession of seven monographic galleries – each devoted to a single artist – interwoven with thematic rooms grouping artists whose work resonates across decades. Philip Guston’s enigmatic Roma (Salad) from 1974, Marsden Hartley’s Mount Katahdin, Autumn No. 1, and Georgia O’Keeffe’s luminous Grey Lines with Lavender, Inner from 1924 anchor a century that moves from intimate portraiture to bold abstraction.
The show sits at the heart of a busy MFAH checklist season: Frida Kahlo: The Life of an Icon in the Beck Building, Public Faces/Private Spaces: Recent Acquisitions through December, and Icons of Indigenous Identity sharing the fall slate. Put together, the season makes a joyful case for a full museum day on Bissonnet – modern masters upstairs, fresh acquisitions nearby, and a century of art history you can walk in an afternoon.
Photo: Michael Barera / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)
