Image: George Bellows, Evening Blue (Tending the Lobster Traps, Early Morning), 1916, oil on panel, Charles Butt Collection
"American Modernism from the Charles Butt Collection," an exhibition organized by the Amon Carter Museum of American Art in Fort Worth, will be on view at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, from October 25, 2026, to January 18, 2027, on Level 1 of the MFAH's Beck Building. It brings together more than 90 works from the collection of Charles Butt, the Texas-born philanthropist, and shows them to the public for the first time.
Butt is widely known for his philanthropy and his commitment to education; according to the museum, he also has a sharp eye for American modernism, and his collection follows the rise of some of the country's most radical artists. The show uses his choices to reconsider the many strands of art history in the United States, from the late 19th century to the 1980s.
Its five thematic sections begin with "Intimate Perspectives," where works by Marsden Hartley, Edward Hopper and Georgia O'Keeffe focus on human connection. "The Language of the Sea" takes up one of American art's basic motifs, which also recalls Butt's childhood near the Gulf of Mexico in Corpus Christi. In "The American Scene," artists such as Charles Burchfield and Arthur Dove turn landscape conventions toward more personal journeys.
"Painting in the Machine Age" sets urban and rural post-industrial scenes by Jacob Lawrence, Jackson Pollock and Charles Sheeler beside geometric abstractions by Blanche Lazzell and Alice Trumbull Mason. The final section, "New Directions," asks what it means to be an American artist, with works by Jasper Johns, Ellsworth Kelly, Mark Rothko and Alma Thomas, among others.
The selection also includes Thomas Hart Benton, Stuart Davis, Joan Mitchell and Andrew Wyeth, as well as the Texas artists Mary Bonner and Everett Gee Jackson. Works illustrated by the MFAH include George Bellows's "Evening Blue (Tending the Lobster Traps, Early Morning)" (1916), O'Keeffe's "My Backyard" (1945) and Lawrence's gouache "The Wall" (1941). An illustrated catalogue accompanies the exhibition.
