Fall 2026: The Season Across Texas

Texas art runs on an academic calendar it never agreed to. The institutions go quiet in July, hold on through August, and then everything lands at once — six major exhibitions inside eleven days in late September, an art fair in early October, and Marfa the weekend after. If you plan the autumn in August you see all of it. If you wait until October you will be choosing between things that overlap.

Here is the season, city by city, with the dates worth putting in a calendar now.

## The fair

[Untitled Art, Houston](/houston/events/untitled-art-fair-houston) returns for its second edition October 2–4 at the George R. Brown Convention Center, with an invitation-only preview on the 1st. Ninety-five galleries this year, up seven from the inaugural run — seventeen from Texas, seventy-eight from twenty countries. First-time exhibitors include Anton Kern, Nara Roesler, Night Gallery, Richard Saltoun and kaufmann repetto, which is a meaningful upgrade in a fair that had to prove Houston could hold one.

The fair matters beyond the booths. The Houston Fine Art Fair and Texas Contemporary both folded; Untitled filled a gap that had been open for years. A strong second edition is what turns a debut into a fixture.

## Houston

The [MFAH](/houston/galleries/mfah) has the two heaviest shows of the season, back to back. American Modernism from the Charles Butt Collection opens October 25 and runs to January 18 — eighty works from the H-E-B chairman's private collection, arriving from the Amon Carter in Fort Worth. O'Keeffe, Hopper, Pollock, Jacob Lawrence, Romare Bearden, Joan Mitchell, Alice Neel. Private collections of this depth rarely come out in public, and this one has been assembled quietly over decades.

A week later, Of Light and Air: Winslow Homer in Watercolor opens November 1 and runs to February 7. Fifty watercolours with oils, drawings and prints alongside, organised by the MFA Boston. Homer's watercolours are the argument for Homer; the oils are what got him into textbooks, but the watercolours are where he was actually free.

At the [Menil](/houston/galleries/menil-collection), John Akomfrah: The Hour of the Dog closes October 11 — if you have been putting it off, that is your deadline. Southern Outsider Artists runs to December 13, and the foyer installation pairing Mel Bochner, Chryssa and Dorothy Hood comes down October 25. The Hood inclusion is worth the trip on its own; her reputation has been under steady repair for a decade now and the Menil has been part of that.

[CAMH](/houston/galleries/camh) holds Mary Ellen Carroll: How To Talk Dirty and Influence People through November 1 — a survey of an artist whose practice runs through environmental policy, immigration and urban legislation more than through objects.

And FotoFest opens its Biennial 2026: Global Visions at Sawyer Yards on October 1, marking forty years.

## Dallas and Fort Worth

September 19 is the day. The [Nasher](/dallas/galleries/nasher-sculpture-center) opens Bruce Nauman: Identical, running to March 21 — recent silverpoint and goldpoint still lifes with animal-form sculptures in polyurethane, silicone rubber and cast plaster. Nauman past eighty, still working the same nerve he has worked since the sixties.

The same day the [DMA](/dallas/galleries/dma) opens Rhythms on Repeat, fifty music-themed works from the collection, inaugurating the reopened Center for Creative Connections. The First Bauhaus Portfolio — the complete 1922 portfolio, the school's first — is already up and runs a full year. Radical Clay: Contemporary Women Artists from Japan follows November 15, thirty-six ceramicists working against a field that excluded them for most of a century.

One closing to note: Roy Lichtenstein in the Studio, the joint Nasher–DMA presentation, ends October 24. On October 10 the Nasher debuts a site-specific commission from the Dallas collective Toxic Shock, on view to January 17.

## Austin

The [Blanton](/austin/galleries/blanton-museum) opens two shows on September 27. Haas Brothers: Uncanny Valley brings the Los Angeles twins' furred, beaded, faintly alarming creatures to Austin — furniture that behaves like fauna. The European Avant-Garde: From Impressionism to Cubism is the other end of the register, a long-run installation from the Julian and Josie Robertson collection that will be up until 2029. On October 10 the Blanton adds Shadows on Stone, colonial Mexican monasteries through the eye of architectural historian John McAndrew.

[The Contemporary Austin](/austin/galleries/contemporary-austin) opens The Living Temple: The World of Moki Cherry on September 18 — the largest US showing to date of the Swedish artist and designer whose tapestries and painted banners were the visual world of Organic Music Society. HOST: Laura Lit continues at Laguna Gloria through January 17.

Also: Austin Museum Day on September 20 opens more than thirty museums free, the Blanton, the Contemporary and Mexic-Arte among them. It is the cheapest day of the year to see the city properly.

## San Antonio

[Artpace](/san-antonio/galleries/artpace) opens its fall International Artists-in-Residence cycle September 17 with a 6–9pm reception: Houston's Irene Antonia Diane Reece, Roksana Pirouzmand, and Mexico City sculptor Chavis Mármol. On view to January 17.

[Ruby City](/san-antonio/galleries/ruby-city) opens Generative Disruption: Feminist Art from the Collection on September 26 — Tracey Emin, Mona Hatoum, Wangechi Mutu, Shahzia Sikander, Tala Madani, Tracey Moffatt, Koo Jeong A, Anya Gallaccio. It is a return to Linda Pace's founding logic, and it is free, as Ruby City always is.

[SAMA](/san-antonio/galleries/san-antonio-museum-of-art) opens Ancient Beauty and Body Art from Four Continents November 21 in the Steves Gallery — adornment and body modification across New Kingdom Egypt, Early Imperial Rome, the Classic Maya and Tang dynasty China, drawn from SAMA's own ancient holdings with loans from the MFAH, the Brooklyn Museum and the Witte.

## Marfa

[Chinati Weekend](/marfa/events/chinati-weekend-2026) runs October 9–11. The centrepiece is Rocks River, new work by Richard Long — an artist Judd rated highly, and a genuinely well-matched commission for that landscape. Long will give a talk and then sit down with Nicholas Serota, formerly of Tate Modern. The weekend also carries a conversation on artists' writing with the Rauschenberg Foundation, a performance by Sharon Van Etten, and an open studio with resident Will Boo. Free, and open to the public every October since 1987.

It is the weekend after Untitled Art. Doing both means a fair in a convention centre and then eight hours west into the high desert, which is either too much or exactly the point.

## Planning notes

The crush is September 17–27: Artpace on the 17th, Moki Cherry on the 18th, Nauman and Rhythms on Repeat on the 19th, Austin Museum Day on the 20th, Ruby City on the 26th, two Blantons on the 27th. Nothing in October competes with itself the way that week does.

The closings to watch are Akomfrah at the Menil on October 11, Lichtenstein at the Nasher on October 24, the Menil foyer on October 25, and Mary Ellen Carroll at CAMH on November 1.

And if you only do one thing: the Butt collection at the MFAH from October 25. Collections like that surface once and then go back behind closed doors.