Houston legend was co-founder of Station and Art Car museums
Jim Harithas was, with his late wife Ann Harithas, co-founder of two Houston art institutions — the Station Museum of Contemporary Art and the Art Car Museum — that dramatically expanded the scope of art presented in Houston. Jim, who arrived in Houston in the 1970s to take a post as director of the Contemporary Arts Museum, died this week. He was 90.
Pete Gershon — curator of programs at the Orange Show Center for Visionary Art and author of “Collision,” a book about the contemporary arts scene in Houston from 1972 to 1985 — posted about Harithas’ death. Gershon said Harithas was “without a doubt the most influential force on the Houston art scene over the past 50 years.”
The news follows by five months word that the Station was closing indefinitely. Jim and Ann Harithas opened the museum more than 20 years ago, creating a dedicated space to art that fell outside the mainstream. In 1998, they opened the Art Car Museum, offering a permanent space dedicated to the creativity that powered Houston’s beloved annual Art Car Parade. The couple were dedicated to local and regional artists, as well as those who worked with politically- and sociallyminded content.
Ann Harithas died in late 2021.
Jim Harithas came to Houston in the 1970s, hired as director of the Contemporary Arts Museum. His path to that point zigzagged between the States and Europe. He was born in Maine in 1932 with a childhood split between Maine and Oklahoma, before his family settled in Germany, where his father was stationed after World War II. Harithas told the Smithsonian in 1979 his mother painted, so he took an interest in art around age 6.
A German expressionism show in Augsburg, Germany, in 1948 was revelatory for him as a teenager, he said.
Harithas spent much of his 20s immersed in study: political science, history, philosophy and eventually art. He found work both as a curator and a teacher, serving as a curator and later director of the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., in the 1960s. The commitment to underground art firmed during tumultuous years informed by the Civil Rights and the antiwar movements. Harithas wore out his welcome at the Corcoran, and headed to New York, where he taught at Hunter College and the School of Visual Arts. At the Everson Museum in Syracuse, he worked with artists including Nam June Paik, Joan Mitchell and Yoko Ono. Harithas was responsible for Ono’s “This Is Not Here” exhibition in the States.
Ono and “This Is Not Here” perfectly triangulated Harithas’ vision: Hers was an outsider art created by an internationally known figure who was a notable advocate for peace. Harithas said at the time Ono “has long deserved major recognition.”
The Contemporary
Arts Museum, Houston, brought in Harithas in the ‘70s soon after the museum had relocated to new confines at the corner of Montrose and Bissonnet. Harithas immediately set about looking for nearby talent to show in the museum’s space. He exhibited work by Julian Schnabel, James Surls, Forrest Prince, Lynn Randolph and Terry Allen.
He bristled at the idea of comfort, frequently hosting provocative exhibitions and on at least one occasion, a famous food fight. Harithas brought in multi-disciplinary artist Antoni Miralda in the late-1970s, whose installation included photographs of food and video of food preparation and consumption at local restaurants. One gallery room included items connected to the Kilgore Rangerettes drill team, who were bused in for the opening night to perform their high-kicks routine.
Stacks of bread and food dye were on hand, offering the potential for disaster. Once one loaf went flying, the event descended into bready bedlam. Harithas didn’t last long at the CAM, about four years, but after a peripatetic existence, he had found his home in Houston. He and Ann married in 1978.
If Harithas had found a stable space to call home, he didn’t become complacent in Houston. His commitment to finding local artists was balanced with an eye cast afar. He would travel to Nicaragua and Palestine seeking artists who could tell stories in his gallery space.
They opened the Art Car Museum in 1998, offering a taste of the annual event year-round. Three years later, they introduced the Station Museum of Contemporary Art with the stated goal of making the museum “a resource that deepens and broadens public awareness of the cultural, political, economic and personal dimensions of art.”
The couple were well aware of Houston’s evolving demographic makeup, so while they looked near for artists to show — like Fifth Ward’s Jesse Lott — they looked around the world for work to show that would appeal to the city’s cosmpolitan population.