AMSET’s ‘A Legacy of Collecting’ exhibit opens today in Beaumont

AMSET opens “A Legacy of Collecting,” featuring 65 works spanning 39 years, running today through Sept. 20 in Beaumont.

BEAUMONT, Texas — The Art Museum of Southeast Texas will open “A Legacy of Collecting,” an exhibition featuring 65 artworks from the museum’s permanent collection spanning 39 years, Saturday, Aug. 9, running through Sept. 20 at 500 Main St. in Beaumont.

The show, curated by Caitlin Clay and organized chronologically, completes the story of AMSET’s 75th-anniversary celebration, following a previous exhibition that focused on the first half of the museum’s history, according to the museum. Clay said the museum intentionally analyzes mentor-protégé relationships when acquiring new works to map connections between educators and students.

This story continues below.

More in Local

The opening room includes a short video about the museum and works from the early days of its current, purpose-built facility, which opened in 1987 after the museum previously operated out of a residential building in Beaumont’s old town, according to the museum. The exhibition includes a piece by local ceramic artist Greg Busceme, founder of Beaumont’s Art Studio, Inc., from his first solo museum show, and a painting by Dixie Gay Friend from a solo show that once featured a live python cared for by former director Lynn Castle.

AMSET achieved accreditation from the American Alliance of Museums in 1989, a milestone the museum says was impossible to reach at its former location. Of roughly 3,000 accredited museums nationwide, only 33 are in Texas, with the McFaddin-Ward House the only other accredited museum in Beaumont, according to the museum. By 1990, the museum had more members than Houston’s Contemporary Art Museum,

The 1990s section highlights the museum’s American Folk Art collection, sparked by a donation from collectors Warren and Sylvia Lowe and represented in the show by Alice Stallings’ painting “Large-Middle Size Herd.” The decade also saw AMSET become one of the first Texas museums to host a solo exhibition by glass artist Dale Chihuly, represented in the show by a piece from his Macchia series. The section also includes a Haitian voodoo flag that the museum says is the only artwork in its history to be actively protested, after visitors brought Bibles into the museum in opposition; the museum did not withdraw the piece from display.

The 2000s section, tied to the museum’s 2007 installation of the Felix Fox Harris Gallery and its 2008 reaccreditation, includes James Surls’ sculpture “Standing Water Flowers” paired with a flower painting by Lamar University professor Jerry Newman, who taught Southeast Texas artists John Alexander and Paul Manes. The section also features David Bates’ “Forsythia,” built from painted wood blocks, and Sharon Kopriva’s mixed-media sculpture “Mother Teresa,” a satirical response to her religious upbringing; Castle was once stopped by police while transporting Kopriva’s sculptures for her original exhibition, according to the museum. The section also includes Howard Sherman’s “The Power of an Enduring Conversation,” created when the artist was two years out of graduate school for his first solo museum show.

The exhibition’s final section covers the past decade, including a rideable see-saw created by artist Tom Jean Webb for his 2025 solo exhibition, and reflects the museum’s shift since 1987 toward Texas fine artists or those inspired by time spent in the state, including a donation of more than 460 Mexican folk art objects from collector John Gaston Fairey in the 2010s.