Soaring Spaces and Hard Topics

The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, reintroduces its collection of modern and contemporary art in a new building.

The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, is home to one of the country’s outstanding collections of modern and contemporary art, with a particular focus on Latino and Latin American artists. On Nov. 21, more than 1,000 works from that collection will go on display in their new home, the Nancy and Rich Kinder Building, designed by Steven Holl Architects. The building’s exterior, clad in half-tubes of translucent glass, sets the tone for the airy, light-filled interior, with more than 100,000 square feet of exhibition space circling a three-story atrium.

The Kinder Building offers galleries of varying size and scale to accommodate what director Gary Tinterow calls the museum’s “disparate collections,” from paintings, sculpture, prints and drawings to photography, installations and decorative arts. For the first time, “we have dedicated spaces where we can manage and control what we’re going to be showing,” said Mari Carmen Ramírez, curator of Latin American art. “That gives us huge flexibility.”

Read the story at wsj.com: https://www.wsj.com/articles/soaring-spaces-and-hard-topics-11604689185