Houston Art Galleries, Museums, Supplies & More

Best art galleries Houston museums supplies classes your area

Art in Houston will be covered in full detail for you today and our opening section will discuss the best art galleries and museums near you.

After that we will get into a variety of other topics like local art supply stores, events, festivals, dealers, appraisers, walking tours, sculptures and statues, art classes, studios for rent, and the top frame shops in your area.

If you are after any specific section you can jump straight to it using the table of contents on the left and we are also including a Houston art map with all of the various places we mention throughout the post pinned on it.

In case you are interested there is a huge list of Midwest city guides available at that link.

Best Art Galleries & Museums In Houston

When you want to check out the best art galleries and museums in Houston head to:

The exhibitions and programming at Blaffer Art Museum are always free and open to the public from 10am to 5pm Tuesday through Thursday and from 12pm to 5pm on weekends.

The Contemporary Arts Museum is devoted to bringing contemporary works to the public’s attention through exhibitions, seminars, original publications, and a variety of educational programs and monthly events. Much like Blaffer the museum’s admission is always free but be warned they are closed on Monday and Tuesday.

The Menil’s permanent collection has over 17,000 works and is still growing. Highlights include arts of Africa, the Americas and the Pacific Northwest, the Ancient World, the Pacific Islands, drawing, Medieval and Byzantine periods, modern and contemporary, surrealism, and the permanent installation Witnesses for which there is no admission charge and public programs are free. Every October they also host a spectacular event called Party in the Park and their normal hours are 11am to 7pm but they are also closed Mondays and Tuesdays.

The Museum of Fine Arts Houston was established in 1917 and is Texas’s oldest art museum and one of the largest in the United States. The museum’s permanent collection covers more than 6,000 years of history and features approximately 70,000 items from six continents including a highlight exhibition of the Hossein Afshar Collection, one of the world’s most distinguished private Persian art collections. Just don’t go on Monday or Tuesday when the Museum of Fine Arts is closed.

The Station Museum of Contemporary Art organized significant solo exhibitions by Mel Chin, James Drake, Dick Wray, Jesse Lott, George Smith, and more along with a variety of programs and monthly events that include live performances, talks, lectures, and small concerts. This museum’s admission is completely free from noon to 5pm except for Monday and Tuesday when they are closed.

Laura Rathe Fine Art is open from 10am to 5pm Tuesday through Saturday and sells art while providing advisory services, consultations, installations, and help with placement.

Sugar Land Art Center & Gallery rents out art studios and provides lessons in a variety of media to people of all ages but they are closed on weekends while being open from 9am to 4pm Monday through Thursday and from 10am to 1:30pm on Friday.

Materials & Supplies Near You

There are quite a few stores in your area to buy art supplies and materials like:

Art Supply on Main Street sells materials for students, professionals, and anybody who wants to be creative including uncommon and difficult-to-find things.

Texas Art Asylum is a creative reuse store that specializes in the reuse of art and craft materials in Houston that also accepts clean reusable materials from local businesses and individuals.

If you want to visit one of the country’s largest arts and crafts stores head to Texas Art Supply where you will find over 60,000 high-quality name-brand supplies. They also have a paper section with one-of-a-kind handmade papers from all over the world.

Art Supply Network has been providing quality art materials for over 60 years and carries over 30,000 products plus they are happy to do custom orders for items that aren’t always in stock.

The Michaels near you are art supplies chain stores that also offer custom framing, but most of you probably already knew that.

Shows & Events

Some of the best local shows, festivals, and events would be:

Frida Festival has been organized by local artist Lizbeth Ortiz in collaboration with the Houston Institute for Culture since 2005. The festival usually takes place in April and showcases varied community skills in painting, music, dance, and other forms of creative expression in an urban arts market.

The Art Car Parade is your area’s largest free public event and is a non-stop celebration with over 250 entries and 200,000-300,000 spectators that takes place downtown every April.

Each October the Bayou City Art Festival goes down on an 8 to 10-mile asphalt loop surrounded by lush trees, vegetation, and picnic spots while promising a stress-free outdoor gallery filled with 300 artists working in 19 varieties of media.

The Menil Collection is the host for the beautiful Party in the Park which is hosted in Menil Park every October. The event will feature refreshing beverages, hors d’oeuvres, and numerous culinary stations in addition to energetic entertainment.

Art Dealers & Appraisers

You will be able to add a new piece to your collection or find out the true value of something at these art dealers and appraisers in your area:

Higham & Associates sells many types of local visual art and provides free domestic shipping on orders of $2,500 or more, except sculpture and ceramics.

American Art Resources offers a wide range of services including pre-design advising, art program design, project management, commissioning, procurement, framing, shipping and installation, asset management, and inventory control.

Lewis & Maese Auction Company hosts a monthly auction in addition to on-site sales while also providing appraisal services and they are experts in consignment.

Laura Rathe Fine Art and Hiram Butler Gallery from the best museums and galleries list also sell art in your area.

Walking Tours

Enjoy some nice weather with one of these walking tours:

Houston Urban Adventures is a day tour led by guides that explores street art and public installations throughout downtown while sharing facts and trivia.

With Houston Art Tours Sonja Roesch will take you on a tour of visual arts near you including stops at the Menil Collection, Rothko Chapel, Dan Flavin Hall, and a number of private galleries.

The Gasam Texas will help you explore the Texas Graffiti & Street Art Museum which gives visual showcases of history, exhibitions, public art, education, and interactive experiences.

Sculptures & Statues

Framing art supply stores Houston lessons near you studios

You can also find some really unique sculptures and statues around town like:

  • Cullen Sculpture Garden at Bissonnet St
  • Cloud Column at 5101 Montrose Blvd
  • Hawkins Sculpture Walk at 5801 Caroline St #5899
  • Virtuoso at 600-698 Prairie St
  • Dillidiidae at 1503 Fannin St
  • Monument Au Fantome at 1500 McKinney

Cullen Sculpture Garden was created by sculptor Isamu Noguchi and contains masterworks from 20th- and 21st-century artists like Louise Bourgeois, Pietro Consagra, Henri Matisse, Joan Miró, Auguste Rodin, and David Smith.

Anish Kapoor’s Cloud Column is a massive stainless-steel sculpture that was installed in The Brown Foundation Plaza in 2018 after being created in 2006.

Hawkins Sculpture Walk features ten busts of notable figures from around the world that line the entrance to the Gardens at the intersection of Caroline and Hermann Drive.

Virtuoso is a 36-foot-tall, 21-ton outdoor concrete sculpture group by David Adickes. It was installed in 1983 on the edges of the downtown Theater District near the Lyric Centre building and was commissioned as a work that honored music, dance, and the performing arts.

Dillidiidae By Sharon Engelstein was created in 2014 and is located at Herman Park.

Monument Au Fantome is an outdoor sculpture by Jean Dubuffet that is situated on Avenida de las Americas.

Houston Art Classes

You can take lessons at some of the best Houston art schools and classes like:

The art program at Houston School of Art & Design offers beginning to advanced art classes for children and adults along with individualized instruction and demonstrations of classic drawing and painting techniques by award-winning master artist Thomas S. Cleveland. They also provide a variety of activities like after-school and home-school programs for children in addition to seasonal art camps.

Glassell Studio School offers art history and studio courses for adults 18 and older age in all media fields for all levels of skill and expertise.

Classic and contemporary lessons for adults and children are available at The Art House School of Fine Arts.

Houston Art Lessons offers beginner level lessons for all including private lessons and private parties where all the supplies are provided.

Cordovan Art School has courses of all ages as well as seasonal, private parties, and children’s home school events.

Sugar Land Art Center & Gallery from our first list is another good place to take art lessons in your area.

Studios For Rent Near You

Try to master your next project at one of these art studios:

Sugar Land Art Center & Gallery is another place to try and rent studio space near you.

Framing

A frame can take a normal looking picture a long way, and some of the best places for local art and picture framing are:

Davis Hardware & Picture Framing has more than 100 years of combined framing experience selling numerous ready-made frames, unique gift items, and more than 3,000 selections of custom frames.

Pictures Plus specializes in custom framing in Houston along with art printing, photograph restoration, and bespoke mirrors.

Full-service picture and art restoration as well as archive photo and document restoration and reproduction are available at Allart Picture Framing.

A large assortment of frames, design samples, greeting cards, and gifts can be found at Dramatika Custom Framing who also creates custom canvas, does canvas stretching, and valuable piece preservation.

Red Barn Picture Framing has over 5,000 frame samples to pick from including a large selection of mouldings and mat boards. Other services they provide are canvas stretching, gallery wraps, frame repair, and on-site photo restoration plus they sell diy framing supplies.

Michaels and American Art Resources from our previous lists also do framing.

Some of you may want to read our posts on:

Have Fun Enjoying The Houston Art Scene

Well guys, we really did try to cover the full art scene near you to the best of our abilities. You read about the best local galleries, museums, events, shows, supply stores, dealers, appraisers, walking tours, sculptures, classes, studios, and framers in your area.

Anyone that is still reading probably love arts as much as we do. If so let us know about any of your own tips and tricks in the comments at the end of the post, or please also let us know if we got anything wrong or if anything we posted has become dated.

Have fun going to the galleries, museums, buying supplies or doing anything that has to do with art in Houston!

Author Avatar

This post and all of the posts on our site are edited by Dan Soloman who has been a huge fan of art since he was a little kid. His mother was a good local artist, and she taught him the trade from a very early age. He studied art and its history in both high school and college, has worked at multiple galleries, and recently has begun creating and editing online content for this site and some other online media platforms.

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