The Houston Alternative Art chronology was originally compiled by Caroline Huber and The Art Guys for the exhibition catalogue No Zoning: Artists Engage Houston, which was published by the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston (CAMH) to accompany the group show of the same name. The exhibition was on view at CAMH from May 9-October 4, 2009. No Zoning: Artists Engage Houston was co-curated by Toby Kamps and Meredith Goldsmith and featured projects by twenty-one Houston artists using the city as inspiration, material, and site. This chronology documents Houston's alternative art scene.Britt, By Douglas. “No Zoning Catalog, Activities Make up for Exhibit’s Flaws.” Houston Chronicle (TX), 2009, p. 2. America’s News, Accessed 15 Mar. 2026.
Before 1970
1930
Houston Artists’ Gallery Grace Spaulding John and a group of women opened the city's first artist-run gallery, the Houston Artists’ Gallery, in the basement of the Beaconsfield Hotel on Main Street. The organization sponsored exhibitions, auctions, and lectures.
1949
Contemporary Arts Association Notes:The building housing the Contemporary Arts Association (CAA) was from its inception often referred to as the Contemporary Arts Museum (CAM) and the latter name was used almost exclusively from the 1970s to 1990s. In 2002 the institution’s name was officially changed to the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston (CAMH).
Houston artists and architects seeking a venue for displaying contemporary art and design founded the volunteer-operated Contemporary Arts Association, initially presenting exhibitions at the Museum of Fine Arts and in 1949 erecting an A-frame museum building on Dallas Street in downtown Houston. The organization gradually gained professional status and curator Jermayne MacAgy was hired as its first full-time director in 1955.
1956
The Orange Show Postman Jeff McKissack began to single-handedly design and build The Orange Show, a brightly colored, carnival-like environment dedicated to the orange and to the virtues of good health and right living. He used concrete, stucco, and found objects—mosaic tiles, wrought iron fencing, wagon wheels, mannequins, and tractor seats—to transform two plots on Munger Street in the East End into a vividly painted architectural maze of walkways, balconies, exhibits, and performance stages. When The Orange Show finally opened to the public in 1979, the hordes of visitors McKissack anticipated did not come. He died shortly thereafter. The facility is now preserved by the Orange Show Center for Visionary Art and is the site for events and performances.
1963
Jim Love and Roy Fridge Studio Artists Jim Love and Roy Fridge shared a studio in a two-story derelict storefront on Truxillo Street near West Alabama. It became a meeting place and notorious party site for artists such as Donald Barthelme, Jack Boynton, David McManaway, and Charles T. Williams, along with numerous Houston art patrons and international visitors such as Jean Tinguely and Niki de Saint Phalle.
1968
The Beer Can House John Milkovisch, a retired railroad upholsterer, began to transform an ordinary bungalow in Houston's West End into a kinetic, shimmering environment. Working for twenty years, he covered the entire yard and drive with intricate patterns of concrete studded with marbles, salvaged industrial washers, and stones; decorated the house and trees with garlands made from beer can tops, rims, and pull tabs; and clad the house with thousands of flattened beer cans, ensuring that he would never have to paint the house again. The site is now a revered local monument maintained by the Orange Show Center for Visionary Art.
1969
Lee Benner Lee Benner, opened his first studio on Wheeler St. Made sculpture for Coca-Cola, Bush Gardens, and Jockey's.
Daucus Carota Herschel Berry, Michael Hollis, and Kelly Kirkonnel started Daucus Carota (Latin for “wild carrot”) while they were in high school. The group had a shifting membership that included Andy Feehan, Nicky Galmiche, Chris Lesikar, Jim Martin, and Julian Schnabel. Members of Daucus Carota used images and sculptures of carrots in their work, often leaving bunches of real carrots in their wake. They sculpted an oversized painted carrot, which they placed around town, including in front of the Museum of Fine Arts, in a gesture designed to belittle the art establishment.
Ant Farm In 1968 in San Francisco, Chip Lord and Doug Michels founded the architecture and art collective Ant Farm, which later included Douglas Hurr, Hudson Marquez, and Curtis Schreier. In 1969 while Lord and Michels were teaching at the University of Houston College of Architecture, Ant Farm staged a series of free-form architectural performances in the Houston area. Subsequently, they worked throughout the United States, but realized some of their important projects in Houston, including Time Capsule 1972–1984 (1972); a monumental sculpture on Kirby Drive for the Hard Rock Café with an actual 1962 Thunderbird hardtop convertible towering aloft, STP (Save the Planets) (1985); and their award-winning project The House of the Century (1971–73), a futurist spaceship-like dwelling for Marilyn Oshman Lubetkin located near Angleton, Texas, south of Houston.
1970s
1972
Goodyear Blimp over CAM During the opening of Exhibition 10, curated by Sebastian J. Adler at the Contemporary Arts Museum, artist and experimental filmmaker Michael Snow created an elaborate piece on the advertising light grid of the Goodyear Blimp, which flew over the museum.
Hyde Park Miniature Museum D. D. Smalley, grandfather of artist and musician Frank Davis, was inspired by his grandson's birth in 1941 and began production of what was eventually called the Hyde Park Miniature Museum. On display in the oversized attic of a house on Hyde Park Street was a range of artifacts, including 250,000 postage stamps wrapped in bundles of 100, dinosaur excrement and bones, Indian skulls, tools, handmade models, over 1,000 clocks, the U.S. Constitution in Braille, wax recordings, a three-toed horse hoof, short wave radio paraphernalia, bee tracking glasses, dressed fleas, and many other curiosities and miscellany, all carefully arranged and catalogued.
B. E. & J. Holding Firm Bob Camblin, Earl Staley, and Joe Tate, all university studio art teachers, used the chance operation of the I Ching to name their collaboration the “B. E. & J. Holding Firm.” In the backyard of their shared studio on Garrott Street, they built a large sculptural tower with a payphone on the third floor. It became a meeting place for many artists in the community, including Al Smith, David Folkman, Jack Boynton, and Mark Battista, a former architecture student from Rice University. Their collaboration resulted in three exhibitions at the University of St. Thomas.
1973
Re:Vision In fall 1973 Ian Glennie, interim director of the Contemporary Arts Museum, organized an exhibition called Re:Vision, which included performances, concerts, films, and artworks. One of the projects was a site-based sound portrait of Houston by Robert Whitman, a New York artist known for his theater and technology works. Whitman assembled volunteers and assigned each participant a specific location on a map of Houston and a time to call in. When they reached Whitman, they talked about where they were and what they saw. Using a sound mixing board, Whitman then arranged recordings of the calls into a concert like sound piece that was broadcast live on Pacifica radio.
1974
West End Metal Houses Note:The area informally known as the West End is bounded by Washington Avenue on the north, Memorial on the south, and Durham and Westcott to the east and west, incorporating more formal subdivisions such as Rice Military and Magnolia Grove.
On Roy Street, a few blocks away from the Beer Can House and mirroring the vernacular metal warehouses scattered throughout the neighborhood, architects Eugene Aubry, Ian Glennie, and Hossein Oskouie designed the first residence using an industrial metal exterior. This residential type has since proliferated in the area (sometimes referred to as “Tin Town”) and throughout the city. Glennie and Fredericka Hunter of Texas Gallery were the original inhabitants of the loftlike space, and they presented the first Houston performances of composer Philip Glass and performance artist Joan Jonas in their home.
1975
The Menil Collection Campus Facilitated by the lack of zoning in Houston, John and Dominique de Ménil discreetly began acquiring thirty acres of property adjacent to the University of St. Thomas, at first intended for potential university expansion. They later decided to build their museum there and to maintain the residential properties against the incursion of unwanted architecture and businesses. In 1974, under the direction of architect Howard Barnstone, the many bungalows comprising the neighborhood were all painted gray with white trim, inspired in part by Dominique de Menil's Rice Museum exhibition of grisaille painting Gray is the Color. This gray theme informed the look of the Renzo Piano–designed Menil Collection, which opened in June 1987 on part of the site where some houses had been demolished or moved. The remaining bungalows today are art administrative offices, arts spaces, and homes—a unique and homogeneous neighborhood-within-a-neighborhood.
1976
See Saw As part of the Main Street Festival, artist Mel Chin created an earthwork called See Saw in Hermann Park with funds he raised from GeoSource, an oil company. Chin and GeoSource worked closely to build the work, which consisted of two “planter boxes” set apart and linked by a hydraulic system, so that they ascended and descended in opposition to each other when visitors stood on them.
1977
Mayhem at CAM The Kilgore College Rangerettes, a renowned women's synchronized drill team dressed as miniskirted cowgirls, performed during the opening night of an exhibition at CAM organized by James Harithas featuring the work of Antoni Miralda, a sculptor whose medium is food and its attendant ceremonies. In a nod to the local Rainbow Bread Company, the artwork on view was an installation of bread dyed all the colors of the spectrum. Perhaps stirred by the high-kicking Rangerettes, the opening night crowd erupted in mayhem and tore the bread apart in a food fight that spilled into the streets.
SWAMP A community-wide offshoot of the Rice University Media Center, the Southwest Alternate Media Project (SWAMP) was founded as a Texas-based nonprofit organization to promote the creation and appreciation of film, video, and new media, as well as, originally, to provide low-cost access to media production facilities.
1978
Christ Church Gallery Artist Terrell James opened and operated a gallery for several years on the premises of the downtown Christ Church Cathedral, an Episcopal church founded in 1839.
Women's Caucus for Art The Houston Women's Caucus for Art was founded as a regional chapter of the national Women's Caucus for Art, to actively support equal opportunity and visibility for work by women. Participants included MaryRoss Taylor, Gertrude Barnstone, Lynn Randolph, Toby Topek, Suzanne Bloom, and Roberta Graham Harris.
Ring II: The Embrace . . . Advanced to Fury Terry Allen presented his music-theater piece The Ring in a full-scale wrestling ring erected in Spinoza, Inc., the industrial warehouse of Max Miller's railroad track company near Channelview. In the ring, a couple verbally recounted their relationship as a male and a female wrestler violently acted out their roles while random audience members stood and recited parts of the narrative. This was one of the first public performances of actress/performance artist Jo Harvey Allen.
1979
Urban Animals