HOUSTON, TX.- In Spring of 2025, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston will welcome these Exhibitions:

Picturing Nature: The Stuart Collection of 18th- and 19th-Century British Landscapes and Beyond
January 12 – July 6, 2025

Established in 2015 at the MFAH, the Stuart Collection encompasses the flowering of landscape drawing in Britain in the 18th and 19thcenturies. Through the watercolors, drawings, prints, and oil sketches of such notable artists as Richard Wilson, Thomas Gainsborough, John Robert Cozens, John Constable, J.M.W. Turner and Samuel Palmer, the collection chronicles visual responses to the natural world. During this time, artists shifted from topographical and picturesque depictions to intensely personal and romantic treatments of the landscape. Also known as the “golden age of watercolor,” this period saw British artists innovate the technique and raise its status to a new level. The exhibition is organized by the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.

Toshiko Takaezu: Worlds Within
March 2 – May 18, 2025

Born of Okinawan heritage in Hawaiʻi, Toshiko Takaezu (1922-2011) was a groundbreaking 20th-century American artist most celebrated for her prolific output of expressively glazed “closed form” ceramic sculptures that ranged in scale from palm-sized works to immersive environments. This major touring retrospective and monograph centered on the life and work of artist was organized by The Noguchi Museum and Sculpture Garden, New York. The exhibition will feature some 100 works from private and public collections around the country. The new monograph co-published with Yale University Press, also titled Toshiko Takaezu: Worlds Within, represents the most ambitious monograph on an American ceramic artist to date. This retrospective is organized by The Isamu Noguchi Foundation and Garden Museum with assistance from the Toshiko Takaezu Foundation and the Takaezu family.

Tamara de Lempicka
March 9 – May 26, 2025

Fleeing post-revolutionary Russia, Tamara de Lempicka (1894 - 1980) took Paris by storm in the 1920s with portraits, nude figure studies, and still life paintings that united classicism and high modernism to create some of the most defining works of the Art Deco era. Celebrated internationally in subsequent decades, and then forgotten in the years that followed World War II, she has reemerged in recent years as both a Pop-culture icon and a path-breaking feminist. Tamara de Lempicka, opening at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston in March 2025, is the first U.S. retrospective devoted to Lempicka, highlighting the decisive years from 1922 to 1949 that encapsulate her career and reveal new perspectives on her life and design practice. In addition to her celebrated portraits, the more than 100 works on view will also include her experiments in Cubism and Expressionism, melancholic street scenes and domestic interiors, and a wide selection of rarely seen drawings that demonstrate her superb draftsmanship. The installation will also feature examples of Art Deco fashion and design to place Lempicka's unique achievements in the context of her times. For Houston, this is also a home-coming, as Lempicka made Houston her second home in the 1960s, and the exhibition has been planned with the enthusiastic cooperation of the artist's family. Tamara de Lempicka is organized by the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco in collaboration with the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.

Knights in Shining Armor: The Pavia Tapestries
March 23 – May 26, 2025

This cycle of seven lavish tapestries depicting scenes from the famed Battle of Pavia is being presented in the United States for the first time on this national tour. Commissioned by Holy Roman Emperor Charles V to commemorate his decisive victory in 1524 over French King Francis I, the tapestries --- monumental in scale, each measuring about 28 feet wide and 14 feet high—draw viewers into the world of Renaissance history, military technology, and fashion. Narrative depictions of key moments from the battle are packed with near life-size figures and horses in full battle regalia, set within the scenography of the battlefield and countryside outside the besieged northern Italian city of Pavia. After a careful restoration, which has returned them to their original splendor, the entire cycle of seven tapestries Alongside the tapestries, impressive examples of precious arms and armor from the period evoke the human experience of war in the Renaissance. This exhibition is organized by the Museo e Real Bosco di Capodimonte and The Museum Box in collaboration with the Kimbell Art Museum, the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, and The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.