Museum of Fine Arts, Houston

Imagine a place where curiosity is the only credential—where all the diverse communities in Houston can come together as one, united by a shared passion for history, art, and knowledge. We can only be talking about the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (MFAH), one of the largest museums in the United States with nearly 80,000 works spanning 5,000 years and six continents. Located on a 14-acre campus in Houston's Museum District, the MFAH features permanent collections, special exhibitions, learning and interpretation programs, studio instruction, publications, conservation, and scholarly research.

In the spirit of making art as available as possible, nearly 40 percent of visitors are admitted for free. Just to name a few of those granted complimentary admission: children under 12, most school tours during the week, Lone Star Card participants and up to six guests, and visitors under 18 and on weekends with a library card. If you don’t fall into one of those categories, fear not! The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston is free to everyone every Thursday.

Okay, so you’re playing hooky from work on Thursday. Now you need to plan your day at the museum. First thing to know is that most of the exhibits are located at the Sarofim Campus in Houston’s Museum District, which is where you’ll find an antiquities collection with a Roman statue and Egyptian coffin, 19^th-century American masterworks from Frederic S. Remington, and Indigenous North American jewelry. For film buffs, there’s the Brown Auditorium Theater, which hosts a regular rotation of screenings and is one of the few places in the state where you can still watch movies on 35mm film, rather than a digital projector.

When you’re ready to rest your legs, get lunch at one of the museum’s delicious restaurants, Café Leonelli and Le Jardinier. These aren’t the culinary afterthoughts you find at an airport or arena, either. Café Leonelli is a casual lunch spot with locally sourced ingredients that specializes in fresh focaccia, pizza, and La Colombe coffee. Le Jardinier provides a Michelin-starred experience of the best French cuisine has to offer. Their seasonal menus and two-course lunches are a reminder that art doesn’t just look good; it can taste good, too.

MFAH’s House Museums

In addition to the main campus, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston has two historic house museums that display American and European decorative arts in the nearby River Oaks area, just a 15-minute drive away from the main campus.

Bayou Bend

Ima Hogg may inspire giggles in schoolrooms across the Houston area, but her former home is no joke. In fact, it’s one of the finest collections of American decorative art in the entire country. Bayou Bend showcases American furniture, silver, ceramics, and paintings across 14 acres of beautifully manicured gardens.

With its colorful interiors, quirky artworks, and stately dining ware that’ll improve your posture just by looking at it, Bayou Bend is a popular, year-round source for tours and special programs. Worth noting is that the house museum includes the Lora Jean Kilroy Visitor and Education Center, as well as the Kitty King Powell Library, which is home to the William J. Hill Texas Artisans and Artists Archive.

Rienzi

Just two miles from Bayou Bend, Rienzi spotlights the beauty from the other side of the pond—the Atlantic pond, that is. This European decorative arts museum sits on four wooded acres that feel more like the English countryside than Houston's suburbs—in other words, more tea and crumpet than coffee and kolache.

Designed by architect John Staub in 1952 for philanthropists, Carroll Sterling Masterson and Harris Masterson III, Rienzi opened to the public in 1999. The collection runs deep: porcelain, paintings, furnishings, and miniatures that will have you feeling like you stepped into a Jane Austen novel. Beyond regular tours, Rienzi hosts lectures, music performances, and family programs.

History of the MFAH

The MFAH origin story starts the way a lot of great Texas things do: with a modest spark of ingenuity, passion, and hard work.

It all started in 1900 when a women’s volunteer organization started bringing art reproductions into Houston classrooms. Before long, Houston started to catch the art-collecting bug and quickly graduated from reproductions to the real thing. Land was secured at Main Street and Montrose Boulevard, and in 1924, Houston got its first proper art museum. Above the door, the inscription read: "ERECTED BY THE PEOPLE FOR THE USE OF THE PEOPLE." Inside, the museum housed 60 works of art.

A century later, those 60 works have become nearly 80,000. What began as a European and North American focus has sprawled into the kind of encyclopedic collection that makes you marvel at the reach of humanity’s creative spirit: Asian art, African art, Latin American art, Pre-Columbian gold, Islamic art, Judaica, photography, textiles, and more.

From that initial seed of volunteer women, the MFAH grew into a magnificent beacon of art that represents the city of Houston as its very best: sprawling, ambitious, and diverse.