Art Car Museum thrown a $1.25 million lifeline, but likely won’t open for years – Houston Public Media

Courtesy of Houston Art Car Parade

The legacy of Houston’s Art Car Museum will live on after a $1.25 million grant to keep the project afloat.

The historic “Garage Mahal” museum at 140 Heights Blvd. abruptly shuttered in March after 25 years in business. The closure followed the deaths of co-founders Ann O’Connor Williams Harithas in 2021 and her husband James Harithas in 2023.

Both fiercely devoted founders were known as legends in Houston’s contemporary art scene, and their memories were carried out in the art car museum for more than two decades.

RELATED: Houston’s Art Car Museum slated to close in April

The Harithas family months ago awarded the $1.25 million grant to the Orange Show Center for Visionary Art to keep the history of artistic expression alive.

“The family decided it needs to continue,” said Jack Massing, executive director for the Orange Show.

“If you don’t document it, it kind of disappears,” he said.

The revamped museum will be a part of the Orange Show’s campus expansion project, but likely won’t come to fruition for several years.

Since 1987, The Orange Show has organized the Art Car Parade, a funky annual motorcade featuring hundreds of meticulously decorated vehicles.

“It is a big deal,” Massing said. “The Orange Show has basically produced the Art Car Parade for many, many years and the idea of the art car fits directly into our mission statement.”

Campus Expansion

Years of work in progress, The Orange Show announced the campus acquired additional land to reconstruct and revamp a visionary art center in southeast Houston. Part of that project, Massing said, is to establish a dedicated building for the art car museum.

The new project will revitalize a former shipping pallet facility and give new life to the 3,000-square-foot built-by-hand Orange Show Monument.

The carnival-like structure was crafted by Jeff McKissack, a former United States postal worker, and finished in 1979. It is on the National Register of Historic Places.

Project renderings of the 5-acre commercial property visualize a building that resembles a dimly-lit parking garage filled with colorful art cars and brightly-colored lighting fixtures.

Massing said the project is still a moving target and an open date hasn’t been conceptualized yet.

“Basically what we are going to do is have facilities where we can do workshops and teach,” he said. “We are going to have a campus that allows for the celebration of the artists.”

Rogers Partners, the architecture agency that was selected to design the campus masterplan, touts the new space as including “the creation of transformative environments, spontaneous experiences, educational programs, and a robustly programmed public amenity.”

The project also aims to improve accessibility to the revamped monument with added landscape elements, according to the agency’s website.