OpeningNovember 25, 2020
The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston opens the Nancy and Rich Kinder Building
The third gallery building of the MFAH is dedicated to displaying the Museum's outstanding and fast-growing international collections of modern and contemporary art; the 237,000-square-foot Kinder Building has been designed by Steven Holl, Principal and Lead Designer of Steven Holl Architects, and the master plan for the Sarofim Campus. The landscape architects for the 14-acre Sarofim Campus are Deborah Nevins and Mario Benito of Deborah Nevins & Associates/ Nevins & Benito Landscape Architecture, D.P.C.
The Kinder Building, named after Richard D. Kinder, Chairman of the MFAH Board of Trustees, and his wife, Nancy Kinder, opened with a comprehensive installation of the Museum's modern and contemporary collections, from the collections of Latin American and Latino art; photography; prints and drawings; decorative arts, craft, and design.
In the main hall hangs International Mobile by Alexander Calder. Permanently devoted to immersive installations, the flexible black-box at street level presents, The Hydrospatial City, 1946-1972, by the Argentinean artist Gyula Kosice and Caper, Salmon to White: Wedgework, 2000, a light-filled environment by James Turrell. A windowed gallery facing Main Street features Lezart I, 1989, a monumental installation by the Brazilian artist Tunga, adjacent to a gallery presenting the Museum's kinetic sculptures by Jean Tinguely, a historic 1965 acquisition. Moon Dust (Apollo 17), 2009, an installation of suspended lights by Spencer Finch, hangs in the café space.
The curatorial department organizes the second-floor galleries. While incorporating all major movements and representing the internal histories of different media, the galleries also challenge familiar narratives by cutting across national borders and, in some cases, chronological categories. The third-floor galleries feature thematic exhibitions, with artworks from the 1960s onward. These inaugural exhibitions are Collectivity, featuring works that activate a sense of community; Color Into Light, showcasing the dynamic role of color in the work of artists in the United States, Latin America, and Europe; LOL!, with works that use humor as a strategy; Border, Mapping, Witness, which considers maps and borders in geographic, social, and political terms; and Line Into Space, examining how artists have explored line in multiple dimensions and media.
Eight major site-specific commissioned works accompany these first installations in the Kinder Building. Commissioned artists are El Anatsui, Byung Hoon Choi, Carlos Cruz-Diez, Ólafur Elíasson, Trenton Doyle Hancock, Cristina Iglesias, Jason Salavon, and Ai Weiwei. The project included two underground tunnels connecting all of the campus' buildings, showing two of the commission's light installations by Olafur Eliasson and Carlos Cruz-Diez. These commissions join additional recent acquisitions displayed in the Kinder Building, including Magdalena Abakanowicz, Glenn Ligon, Martin Puryear, Ursula von Rydingsvard, Doris Salcedo, and Kara Walker.
The Kinder Building, named after Richard D. Kinder, Chairman of the MFAH Board of Trustees, and his wife, Nancy Kinder, opened with a comprehensive installation of the Museum's modern and contemporary collections, from the collections of Latin American and Latino art; photography; prints and drawings; decorative arts, craft, and design.
In the main hall hangs International Mobile by Alexander Calder. Permanently devoted to immersive installations, the flexible black-box at street level presents, The Hydrospatial City, 1946-1972, by the Argentinean artist Gyula Kosice and Caper, Salmon to White: Wedgework, 2000, a light-filled environment by James Turrell. A windowed gallery facing Main Street features Lezart I, 1989, a monumental installation by the Brazilian artist Tunga, adjacent to a gallery presenting the Museum's kinetic sculptures by Jean Tinguely, a historic 1965 acquisition. Moon Dust (Apollo 17), 2009, an installation of suspended lights by Spencer Finch, hangs in the café space.
The curatorial department organizes the second-floor galleries. While incorporating all major movements and representing the internal histories of different media, the galleries also challenge familiar narratives by cutting across national borders and, in some cases, chronological categories. The third-floor galleries feature thematic exhibitions, with artworks from the 1960s onward. These inaugural exhibitions are Collectivity, featuring works that activate a sense of community; Color Into Light, showcasing the dynamic role of color in the work of artists in the United States, Latin America, and Europe; LOL!, with works that use humor as a strategy; Border, Mapping, Witness, which considers maps and borders in geographic, social, and political terms; and Line Into Space, examining how artists have explored line in multiple dimensions and media.
Eight major site-specific commissioned works accompany these first installations in the Kinder Building. Commissioned artists are El Anatsui, Byung Hoon Choi, Carlos Cruz-Diez, Ólafur Elíasson, Trenton Doyle Hancock, Cristina Iglesias, Jason Salavon, and Ai Weiwei. The project included two underground tunnels connecting all of the campus' buildings, showing two of the commission's light installations by Olafur Eliasson and Carlos Cruz-Diez. These commissions join additional recent acquisitions displayed in the Kinder Building, including Magdalena Abakanowicz, Glenn Ligon, Martin Puryear, Ursula von Rydingsvard, Doris Salcedo, and Kara Walker.
