Beloved Houston Art Car Museum will live on in new permanent home

HOUSTON, Texas -- Six months ago, Houston's Art Car Museum rolled out the news that it would shutter at the end of April. But now, plans are revving up to not only keep it open but give it a brand new home - one where its delightful quirkiness will find a kindred spirit in strangeness.

The video above is from a previous report: Blooming again: The sunflower car restored for Art Car Parade

A $1.25 million gift from the Harithas Family through the South Texas Charitable Foundation will give the recently closed museum a new home on the Orange Show Center for Visionary Art's soon-to-be-redeveloped campus, located at the intersection of two of Houston's most culturally significant neighborhoods, the Third Ward and the East End. The gift will ensure a permanent space celebrating art cars.

Visitors can expect rotating exhibitions of mobile masterpieces designed by local, national, and international artists, as well as the personal art car collection of Ann Harithas, who founded the Art Car Museum in 1998 with her husband, Jim. Ann passed away in 2021. Jim followed in 2023, and the beloved museum was left to their heirs, son Thomas Pascal "Will" Robinson, and daughters Madeline Merrill, Molly Kemp, and Stephanie Loeffler.

Continue reading this article from our ABC13 partners at Houston CultureMap.

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