Museum Hours: Wednesday - Saturday, 11AM - 6PM
General Admission: Always Free, Donations Accepted
Support the Houston Museum of African American Culture
Houston Museum of African American Culture (HMAAC) is a private, non-profit 501(c)(3) organization. Your support will help ensure the museum sustainability. Text “HMAAC” to 44-321 to donate!
Lorenzo Pace: Never Forget Life and Art is to Play
CURATED BY: ALYSSA MATTOCKS
September 11 - December 10
The works in Lorenzo Pace: Never Forget Life and Art is to Play reflect Pace’s longstanding interest in the relationships between objects, materials, history, and place. For Pace, play describes an open and intuitive engagement with materials: a process of handling, combining, rearranging, and discovering what an object might become. Working with wood, textiles, and found objects, he brings West African visual traditions and material culture into conversation with African American histories and forms of making. His mother was a quiltmaker, and quilting, like wood carving and assemblage, has remained an important point of reference throughout his practice.
Jasper, 1940: A SOUND INSTALLATION
CURATED BY: MALEKE GLEE
September 11 - December 10
Jasper, 1940 is an offering that invites you to listen slowly and intentionally to Black sound.
This motion activated sound installation samples archival materials from the Library of Congress, building layer upon layer of sounds drawn from and inspired by interviews with two brothers from Jasper, Texas.
Martin contemplates the possibilities and perspectives of what’s lost when memories are held within an institutional archive. These archival fragments are parts for assembly, requiring future engagement. Mirroring the collaborative nature of the archive itself, the interactive installation responds to the listener’s movement, creating a distinct experience shaped by each person’s point of arrival and route of departure.
Visit the Culture Shoppe at HMAAC for all your local artists and vendors merchandise!
exhibition archive
Visit our most recent exhibitions via our virtual 3D portal. Click anywhere to begin. For more of our other exhibitions, please scroll below.
Latinx Museum of Art in Houston?, curated by Benito Huerta. A glimpse of what a gallery exhibition in a Latinx museum might look like when accompanied by programs defined completely by Latinx voices.
Permanent Exhibitions
The Houston Museum of African American Culture dedicated its Stairwell of Memory on February 19, 2022 with the addition of the portrait of Houstonian Robbie Tolan, “The Survivor.” On December 11, 2021, HMAAC dedicated a portrait of Tolan by artist Cedric Ingram that was added to the ones of Bland and Floyd. The three of them represent our area’s most prominent symbols of police brutality. America is indeed lucky and blessed that one of them survived; a living reminder that justice for black victims of police brutality is so rare as to essentially be non-existent, and that good citizens of all races must be diligent to change our current culture to one of fairness and equity.
The Jazz Church of Houston
“The Jazz Church of Houston is an endeavor by artist Tierney Malone to create a temporary institution dedicated to collecting and sharing the story of Houston's musical tribe. While there are museums in Texas dedicated to music, a space does not exist that chronicles the jazz history of Houston. The name “Jazz Church” drew its inspiration from the Church of John Coltrane in San Francisco. Established in 1970, the church uses John Coltrane’s music as an expression of worship. The Jazz Church of Houston is a secular temple that will serve as a communal gathering place for like-minded people to listen, learn and celebrate jazz music and culture in Houston.
The Jazz Church of Houston’s patron saint is Texas tenor legend, Arnett Cobb. He is the standard bearer for all those who came after him. He made Houston his base of operation instead of New York or LA, as many of his contemporaries have done. He mentored the next generation of jazz musicians who followed in his footsteps to New York. He is the model of rugged individualism that often characterizes Texans. He survived many physical challenges to pursue his passion of making music. He was hospitalized for a year from a car accident, and used crutches for the rest of his life. He never let his physical challenges prevent him from playing for audiences around the world.”-Tierney Malone, via jazzchurchhouston.org
Open Your Eyes
Houston Museum of African American Culture
OUR MISSION
The mission of HMAAC is to collect, conserve, explore, interpret, and exhibit the material and intellectual culture of Africans and African Americans in Houston, the state of Texas, the southwest and the African Diaspora for current and future generations. In fulfilling its mission, HMAAC seeks to invite and engage visitors of every race and background and to inspire children of all ages through discovery-driven learning. HMAAC is to be a museum for all people.
OUR VISION
HMAAC seeks to be a cultural portal through which people share and converge histories and contemporary experiences that acknowledge and expand the African American experience, and from such interactions come together to build a common future.
