Image: Installation view of Mary Ellen Carroll: How To Talk Dirty and Influence People at Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, 2026. Photo: Sean Fleming.
Contemporary Arts Museum Houston is presenting ‘Mary Ellen Carroll: How To Talk Dirty and Influence People,’ a survey of the New York–based artist’s work that runs through November 1, 2026. The exhibition opened on May 22 in the museum’s Brown Foundation Gallery, where admission is always free. CAMH describes it as the first exhibition to survey Carroll’s work, focusing on key projects spanning more than four decades and including works shown for the first time.
Curated by CAMH senior curator Rebecca Matalon with Yiran Chi, the museum’s 2025–26 Rice Curatorial Fellow, the exhibition examines Carroll’s civic-oriented conceptual practice across performance, publishing, urban intervention and long-term social engagement. According to the exhibition catalogue, Carroll uses conversation, contracts, zoning codes and bureaucratic processes as components of a conceptual language that operates through law, architecture and lived systems rather than through discrete objects.
The catalogue describes Carroll’s work as combining humor and provocation with research and ethical commitment. Their projects often unfold in real time and in public view, embracing uncertainty, risk and contradiction. The accompanying 292-page catalogue, edited by Matalon with Karen Kelly and Barbara Schroeder, offers an overview of Carroll’s work since the 1980s through performance documentation, critical essays, commissioned fiction and poetry, and conversations with the artist.
A related work receiving particular attention is ‘FEDERAL,’ a 2003 24-hour twin-screen film made by recording the north and south façades of the Federal Building in Los Angeles over an entire day. The building, designed in 1969 by Charles Luckman, houses divisions of Veterans Affairs, the State Department, the FBI, Secret Service and the CIA. The work’s documentation, including a series of 24 photographs and related ephemera, is on view in the museum exhibition.
CAMH will present ‘FEDERAL’ separately at Houston’s River Oaks Theatre from 9am on Tuesday, August 25, through 9am on Wednesday, August 26. Carroll is scheduled to attend for the duration of the screening. The presentation is described by the museum as part of the exhibition’s programming; the film will run simultaneously in two upper-level auditoriums, with seating available on a first-come, first-served basis.
The museum is also offering free, all-ages Drop-In Experiences on selected Saturdays from 1pm to 4pm. On August 22, ‘Design a Button’ will invite visitors to layer and collage text into a one-of-a-kind button inspired by Carroll’s exhibition. On August 29, ‘Scavenger Hunt for Themes and Objects’ will ask visitors to look for objects related to the exhibition’s central themes, with CAMH swag offered for completing the activity. Contemporary Arts Museum Houston is located at 5216 Montrose Boulevard in Houston’s Museum District, and the exhibition remains on view through November 1, 2026.
