The Art Car Museum has a new home at the Orange Show after a $1.25M donation

After closing its doors in April, the Art Car Museum will move to a new home on the Orange Show’s soon-to-be-redeveloped campus.

The Houston art organization announced a $1.25 million gift from the Harithas Family through the South Texas Charitable Foundation to continue the museum, which opened in 1998 at 140 Heights Blvd. and came to be known as "The Garage Mahal." 

The gift, as first reported by Texas Monthly, will allow the organization to incorporate a dedicated space for the celebration of art cars. That includes a rotating exhibition 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. 

Following Ann’s passing in 2021 and Jim’s in 2023, the future of the Art Car Museum fell to their heirs, who chose the Orange Show as the space to transfer the museum to, at the intersection of the Third Ward and the East End, on Munger Street.

Ann’s son Thomas Pascal "Will" Robinson, who is also an Orange Show Center for Visionary Art board member, shared excitement over the decision he and his siblings made. 

"The Orange Show was built on a foundation of supporting artists from all walks of life, and encouraging anyone to explore their personal creativity," Robinson said in a press release. "We couldn’t be happier to entrust the Orange Show with our mother’s legacy and continue allowing Houston and the world."

The Orange Show already produces the Houston Art Car Festival & Parade, so having it inherit the museum made sense. 

"We were the natural place and luckily, we had the property to do it," Orange Show Executive Director Jack Massing told Chron.

Massing, who has been involved with the Art Car Parade from the beginning and taken on roles judging and working as an announcer along the parade route, said there isn't a very strict plan in place just yet. But he noted that the Orange Show has a building in mind for the museum. Currently, the team is eying a lot that the nonprofit purchased recently just to the east of their site, and it'll be bigger than the original one on Heights Boulevard. 

As for when it will open, Massing said the timeline is "a little fuzzy." 

"I would think by two years from today, we would have a lot of progress made, and perhaps even the ability to exhibit art cars there," Massing said.