Presented in coordination with Contemporary Arts Museum Houston’s (CAMH) 75th anniversary, Six Scenes From Our Future features the work of six artists who were invited to respond to the institution’s inaugural exhibition, This Is Contemporary Art (1948). This first show proposed a radical approach to the presentation of art. Offering unexpected pairings—like a Jacob Lawrence painting alongside a cheese slicer, or an Alexander Calder mobile in dialogue with Eames screens and a Sunbeam coffeemaker—the exhibition merged museological and domestic contexts while also challenging entrenched hierarchies between the fine arts and design. This Is Contemporary Art set the stage for CAMH as a site of experimentation and play, while announcing the Museum as a forward-thinking space centered around a belief in the transformational power of art and artists. So, too, did the inaugural exhibition position artists as uniquely capable of addressing and reflecting upon a constantly changing world, asserting art and life as inseparable.
Six Scenes From Our Future continues CAMH’s longstanding commitment to centering the visions and voices of artists. Working across sculpture, photography, video, and painting, the six selected artists will mine CAMH’s history to create new work or reframe extant work, highlighting the institution’s ongoing commitment to commissioning artwork. The participating artists are either from or currently based in Texas, with many located in Houston, or have a deep connection to the Museum. Six Scenes From Our Future provides an opportunity to honor CAMH’s past while emphasizing the central role that artists have played and will continue to play in envisioning its future.
Participating Artists
Mel Chin, JooYoung Choi, Leslie Hewitt, Lisa Lapinski, Jill Magid, and Leslie Martinez
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Image caption: Installation view of Six Scenes From Our Future at Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, Texas, 2023. Photo by Francisco Ramos.
Support
Six Scenes From Our Future has been made possible by the patrons, benefactors and donors to CAMH’s Major Exhibition Fund: Chinhui Juhn and Eddie Allen, Sissy and Denny Kempner, Dillon Kyle and Sam Lasseter, MD Anderson Foundation, Rea Charitable Trust, Louisa Stude Sarofim, The Sarofim Foundation, and the Texas Commission on the Arts.
Contemporary Arts Museum Houston is funded in part by the City of Houston through the Houston Arts Alliance.
