HOUSTON, TX.- The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston today announced a roster of acquisitions from the past 12 months. With gifts and purchases across every collecting area of the institution, nearly 2,400 works of art have entered the collection of the MFAH, broadening and deepening the museum’s holdings in several areas.

“Over the past year, our curators sourced, researched and acquired for the museum 2,393 works of art that will broaden and deepen the museum’s holdings in a number of areas, notably in Asian and European art, American painting, photography and contemporary art,” noted Gary Tinterow, director and Margaret Alkek Williams chair of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. “We are privileged to have significant endowments for the purchases of art, primarily for modern and contemporary, and privileged as well to have a generous community of donors, who continue to enhance our collections.”

Acquisitions Highlights

Ai Weiwei, Water Lilies #4, 2022. While completing the Dragon Reflection commission for the Nancy and Rich Kinder Building at the MFAH in 2019, Ai Weiwei was also engaged with an ongoing series of Lego®-brick reliefs that revisit famous artworks, which ultimately included four mural-scaled reliefs that pay homage to Claude Monet’s Water Lilies (c. 1914– 26), in the collection of New York’s Museum of Modern Art. Water Lilies # 4 is the final example from this series, and is made from more than half a million Lego bricks, in 24 standard-issue colors, mounted on 10 aluminum panels that span almost 40 feet across.

Added to Monet’s composition, however, is a dark portal, that represents the doorway to Ai’s childhood home, a haunted memory from the time when his father, the poet Ai Qing, and family were forced into rural exile, living in a cave without electricity or water during the purges of China’s Cultural Revolution. The work is on view in a new exhibition in the Kinder Building, Material Presence.

Hiroshi Sugimoto, Mt. Fuji, 2022. This expansive view of Mount Fuji marks Sugimoto's rare foray into color photography, using pigment print on twelve washi paper partitions to form a traditional Japanese folding screen. Here, Sugimoto, much like Hokusai before him, emphasizes the atmospheric and inky qualities of the sacred mountain, capturing the moment at dawn as the sun’s first rays cast warm red and orange hues. Twenty-five feet across and 5 feet in height, the inkjet image is printed on a traditional Japanese handmade paper used in the fabrication of origami and ritual utensils of Shinto priests. It evokes the quiet power and presence of ink paintings and ukiyo-e woodblock prints. The piece is from a series depicting Japanese landmarks of spiritual significance, integrating photographic techniques and materials with traditional art forms.

Joan Mitchell, Untitled (1976) and Cricket (1981). These two paintings—the first a diptych, the second a triptych—by Joan Mitchell are gifts of Cornelia Cullen Long, chairman emerita of the MFAH. They exemplify Mitchell’s decision to frame many her later midsize paintings in arrays that emphasized themes and variations. The two panels of the untitled diptych are largely complementary, unified in their rich, blue green palette and their measured brushwork. Cricket’s three segments convey a more staccato rhythm, as two similar canvases flank a third dominated by different tonalities and a more stacked composition. Both paintings also reflect the abiding influence of the natural environment around Mitchell’s studio in Véthueil, France, northwest of Paris, which had become her home in 1968. The pair will go on view on October 22, 2025, as part of a larger installation in the Caroline Wiess Law Building, honoring Joan Mitchell on the centennial of her birth.

Edward Steichen, Eleanora Duse (1904). The 24-year-old Steichen created this ethereal, classically Pictorialist portrait of one of the great actresses of her day, famous worldwide for her enchanting stage presence and as a rival to Sara Bernhard. Steichen noted in his autobiography that he photographed Eleanora Duse on the same day that he took his famous portrait of J. P. Morgan, “within an hour’s time.” He was so captivated by the Italian actress during the scheduled session that he requested another attempt, producing this image. Steichen’s wife, Joanna, recalled, “his camera eye lost its objectivity, and the sitting had to be redone.” The portrait will be installed early in 2026 in the photography galleries.

Cecilia Beaux Mother and Son (Mrs. Beauveau Borie and Her Son Adolphe), 1896. The first Cecilia Beaux painting to enter the MFAH collection, this portrait depicts Patty Neill Borie, the wife of a prominent Philadelphia banker and artist, and her son, Adolphe, who later became a painter and studied at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. The image relates closely to Beaux’s celebrated depictions of mothers and children during the same period, which she produced in her Philadelphia studio and which recall, as well, the work of her contemporaries, Mary Cassatt and John Singer Sargent. The portrait is currently on view in the museum’s American art galleries.

India, late 19th/early 20th century Shiva Nataraja. At 8 feet in height, this early-20th- century over life-size bronze figure represents the Hindu god of destruction and creation. As one of the most iconic and symbolically rich depictions of the Hindu god Shiva, the Nataraja form synthesizes profound theological concepts with remarkable sculptural artistry. Representing the god as the cosmic dancer who creates, sustains, and ultimately dissolves the universe, the image holds immense value as both a devotional object and as an embodiment of Indian philosophical thought. The sculpture will go on view in December 2025 in the Arts of India gallery. Luisa Roldán, Virgin of the Immaculate Conception, c. 1690–1706. Luisa Roldán is the earliest woman sculptor documented in Spain, and was acclaimed during her lifetime, achieving the status of Royal Sculptor (Escultor de cámara) for Spain’s King Charles II, unprecedented for a woman artist at the time. This exquisite painted terracotta reflects Roldán’s characteristic delicacy of touch, which imbues the figure with a graceful elegance and youthful innocence. Roldan’s only known depiction of this subject, which had a devout following in Seville during the 18th century, the work will be installed alongside paintings by Murillo and Velázquez in the coming months.

Hendrick ter Brugghen¸ The Crucifixion, c. 1624–1625. Held in a private collection for more than 60 years before its purchase by the MFAH, this extraordinarily moving image of the Crucifixion is by one of most important Dutch painters of the generation before Hals and Rembrandt. Ter Brugghen was among the group of Utrecht Caravaggisti, painters who were deeply influenced by the novel compositions and strongly lit environments of Caravaggio. The powerful, unrelenting nature of this life size image secures it as one of the most striking and demanding Crucifixions in Western art. The painting will go on view in November, among MFAH masterworks of French and Italian Baroque painting.