The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, is among the 10 largest art museums in the United States, with an encyclopedic collection of more than 70,000 works of art, created throughout the world, from antiquity to the present.

Established in 1900, the MFAH is the largest cultural institution in the region. The majority of the museum’s presentations take place on its main campus, which is located in the heart of Houston’s Museum District and comprises the Audrey Jones Beck Building, the Caroline Wiess Law Building, the Glassell School of Art and the Lillie and Hugh Roy Cullen Sculpture Garden. The Beck and Law buildings are connected underground by the Wilson Tunnel, which features James Turrell’s iconic installation The Light Inside (1999). Additional resources include a repertory cinema, two significant libraries, public archives and a state-of-the-art conservation and storage facility. Nearby, two remarkable house museums, Bayou Bend Collection and Gardens and Rienzi, present collections of American and European decorative arts. The encyclopedic collections of the MFAH are especially strong in pre-Columbian and African gold; Renaissance and Baroque painting and sculpture; 19th- and 20th-century art; photography; and Latin American art. The MFAH is also home to the International Center for the Arts of the Americas (ICAA), a leading research institute for 20th-century Latin American and Latino art.

The four main French public collections of decorative arts and design, from the beginning of the 20th century to the present day – Decorative Arts, CNAP/ the National Center for Plastic Arts, the Center Pompidou, National Museum of Modern Art / Center for Industrial Creation ( Mnam / Cci)

Over thirty years of purchases to build a major collection

In 1981, the area of decorative arts, industrial design and crafts was added to the collection, and a specific commission was created with its own budget. It was born out of the willingness to encompass the diversity and vitality of contemporary design. After regular purchases, based on the recommendations of figures from various backgrounds (experts from the Ministry of Culture, but also designers, journalists and independent curators), the collection has grown to include close to 9,500 pieces, including commissions, by over 2,200 artists and designers. It reflects the developments and diversity within this very broad field, and – rather than telling a historical story – it does so through a series of views on and interpretations of what it is today.
Building on a historical core of State commissions, the collection is one of the foremost collections of contemporary design in Europe. Important monographic series illustrate the work of iconic designers within the European scene, including Ettore Sottsass, Alessandro Mendini, Gaetano Pesce, Jasper Morrison, Martin Szekely and Philippe Starck.

Design and industrial prospective

The design collection currently comprises around 8,000 works, designed by almost 900 artists and dating from the beginning of the 20th century to the present day. The collection is centred around the creation process and showcases not only objects but also the way they were designed, through drawings and other design elements. This collection traces the research methods of the creators – architects and graphic designers – who helped forge the history of modernity in the 20th century and who have opened new doors to creation and technique in the 21st century.
Exceptional modern collections have been brought together around the U.A.M. movement (French Union of Modern Artists, 1929) with, amongst others, works by Charlotte Perriand, Pierre Chareau, Eileen Gray, Jean Prouvé and Robert Mallet-Stevens. The collection also contains international works, representing the Bauhaus, the De Stijl movement, Eastern and Central European countries and Japan.

The most important collection of post-war design is that of Ettore Sottsass Jr., which contains over 500 works and exceptional archives. Serge Mouille is represented through an entire collection (over 150 pieces) and Pierre Paulin through an ensemble of 70 drawings, amongst others. Industrial colourists from the 1960s and 1970s are also represented through significant collections (Jean-Philippe Lenclos, André Lemonnier, Cler, Fillacier Grillo, etc.)

Internationally, the design collection includes works by Ron Arad, Jasper Morrison, Marcel Wanders and Ross Lovegrove, as well as over 300 pieces by the French designer Starck. Ensembles have been created around certain French designers, such as Patrick Jouin, Martin Székely, Matali Crasset, François Azambourg or Jean-Baptiste Fastrez.