Fire Escape by Alice Neel is shown right in the exhibition “American Modernism from the Charles Butt Collection” at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Thursday, Oct. 22, 2026.
Melissa Phillip/Houston Chronicle
A person looks at the exhibition “American Modernism from the Charles Butt Collection” at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Thursday, Oct. 22, 2026.
Melissa Phillip/Houston Chronicle
Flight of the Thielens by Thomas Hart Benton is shown in the exhibition “American Modernism from the Charles Butt Collection” at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Thursday, Oct. 22, 2026.
Melissa Phillip/Houston Chronicle
My Hell-Raising Sea by John Marin is shown in the exhibition “American Modernism from the Charles Butt Collection” at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Thursday, Oct. 22, 2026.
Melissa Phillip/Houston Chronicle
The Red Woodpecker by Charles Burchfield is shown in the exhibition “American Modernism from the Charles Butt Collection” at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Thursday, Oct. 22, 2026.
Melissa Phillip/Houston Chronicle
Palisade by Ellsworth Kelly Palisade is shown in the exhibition “American Modernism from the Charles Butt Collection” at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Thursday, Oct. 22, 2026.
Melissa Phillip/Houston Chronicle
Alison de Lima Greene, the Isabel Brown Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, talks about the Weehawken Sequences by John Marin in the exhibition “American Modernism from the Charles Butt Collection” in Houston Thursday, Oct. 22, 2026.
Melissa Phillip/Houston Chronicle
Gasoline Pump by Stuart Davis is shown in the exhibition “American Modernism from the Charles Butt Collection” at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Thursday, Oct. 22, 2026.
Melissa Phillip/Houston Chronicle
A person looks at the exhibition “American Modernism from the Charles Butt Collection” at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Thursday, Oct. 22, 2026.
Melissa Phillip/Houston Chronicle
The Wall by Jacob Lawrence is shown in the exhibition “American Modernism from the Charles Butt Collection” at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Thursday, Oct. 22, 2026.
Melissa Phillip/Houston Chronicle
Evening Blue byGeorge Bellows is shown in the exhibition “American Modernism from the Charles Butt Collection” at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Thursday, Oct. 22, 2026.
Melissa Phillip/Houston Chronicle
Alison de Lima Greene, the Isabel Brown Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, talks about the Gasoline Pump by Stuart Davis in the exhibition “American Modernism from the Charles Butt Collection” in Houston Thursday, Oct. 22, 2026.
Melissa Phillip/Houston Chronicle
Smoking Ships at Sea by Thomas Moran is shown in the exhibition “American Modernism from the Charles Butt Collection” at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Thursday, Oct. 22, 2026.
Melissa Phillip/Houston Chronicle
Alison de Lima Greene, the Isabel Brown Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, talks about Third Avenue El by Guy Pène du Bois in the exhibition “American Modernism from the Charles Butt Collection” in Houston Thursday, Oct. 22, 2026.
Melissa Phillip/Houston Chronicle
Girls with Red Ribbons by Olga Costa, left, and La Familia by Rufino Tamayo, right, are shown in the exhibition “American Modernism from the Charles Butt Collection” at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Thursday, Oct. 22, 2026.
Melissa Phillip/Houston Chronicle
Alison de Lima Greene, the Isabel Brown Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, talks about the exhibition “American Modernism from the Charles Butt Collection” in Houston Thursday, Oct. 22, 2026.
Melissa Phillip/Houston Chronicle
Cliffs Martha’s Vineyard by Thomas Hart Benton is shown in the exhibition “American Modernism from the Charles Butt Collection” at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Thursday, Oct. 22, 2026.
Melissa Phillip/Houston Chronicle
Alison de Lima Greene, the Isabel Brown Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, talks about the woman holding her hat in Along the Road, Bahamas by Winslow Homer in the exhibition “American Modernism from the Charles Butt Collection” in Houston Thursday, Oct. 22, 2026.
Melissa Phillip/Houston Chronicle
Flag I by Jasper Johns is shown in the exhibition “American Modernism from the Charles Butt Collection” at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Thursday, Oct. 22, 2026.
Melissa Phillip/Houston Chronicle
Savarin 1-6 by Jasper Johns is shown in the exhibition “American Modernism from the Charles Butt Collection” at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Thursday, Oct. 22, 2026.
Melissa Phillip/Houston Chronicle
Palisade by Ellsworth Kelly Palisade is shown on right in the exhibition “American Modernism from the Charles Butt Collection” at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Thursday, Oct. 22, 2026.
Melissa Phillip/Houston Chronicle
In bringing “American Modernism from the Charles Butt Collection” to the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, curators Alison de Lima Greene and Joan Wyatt address a key question: What is “American painting” in its realest form?
As Greene suggests, “American Modernism” tells a very good story. With one or two exceptions, predominantly American artists explore predominantly American themes or scenes which in some way inform the American experience.
The exhibition American is on view at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (MFAH) from Oct. 25 through Jan. 18.
The show opens Sunday in the Beck Building. Greene is the Isabel Brown Wilson Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art for MFAH. Wyatt has collaborated with Butt since 2022, managing and curating his collection.
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Butt is perhaps best known as CEO and chairman of the San Antonio-based H-E-B supermarket chain named for his father, Howard Edward Butt. This seems to be A-okay with him. His privacy was emphasized, and re-emphasized, during a preview of the exhibition.
Little is known, or publicly shared, about the origin of his collection. The same goes for the influences or methods behind his collecting.
“(Winslow) Homer is the starting point of his love of seascapes. Though at the time he began collecting, he could only afford a reproduction,” Greene says. “The thing about once you become a collector is that people start to reach out to you.”
We do know that many of the artists modern art promoter Alfred Stieglitz chose for his Intimate Gallery in New York ended up in the Charles Butt Collection.
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Crescendo (Elektra) by George L. K. Morris is shown in the exhibition “American Modernism from the Charles Butt Collection” at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Thursday, Oct. 22, 2026.
Melissa Phillip/Houston Chronicle
Themes emerge throughout ‘American Modernism’ such as the aforementioned seascapes, urban life, American landscapes, geometry, abstraction and jazz. Maybe they’re clues; it’s amusing to consider what Butt’s collection might say about him as a person and art lover.
He plays favorites. There are at least two dozen works by John Marin, mostly of the Maine coastline. Another section is dedicated to Charles Burchfield’s watercolors, too.
Butt’s collection shows off a diverse assortment of predominantly American talent and themes. “Summer at Its Best” (1968) by Alma Thomas, the first Black woman to join the White House’s permanent collection, stands out. Jacob Lawrence’s “The Wall” (1941) captures the artist’s shock after encountering legally sanctioned segregation in the Jim Crow South for the first time. And Rufino Tamayo’s “La Familia” (1925) anchors a wall of familial scenes as a proud display of Indigenous heritage in Mexican culture.
Alison de Lima Greene, the Isabel Brown Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, talks about La Familia by Rufino Tamayo in the exhibition “American Modernism from the Charles Butt Collection” in Houston Thursday, Oct. 22, 2026.
Melissa Phillip/Houston Chronicle
Nearby, Romare Bearden’s “Mama’s Knee” (1971) recasts the Madonna and child as a collage with a jazzy twang.
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“We were able to expand the show with additional loans that are only shown in Houston, following the thinking of the original show,” Greene explains.
“American Modernism” is currently on a Texas tour, having previously debuted at the Amon Carter Museum of American Art in Fort Worth before stopping at the Blanton Museum of Art at the University of Texas at Austin. MFAH’s exhibition has 93 works on view; earlier iterations had up to 10 fewer.
“It’s a progression from intricate ideas of interiors to a romantic relationship with the adventure of abstraction,” Greene adds.
The first gallery and works visitors encounter are intimate in both scale and depiction of daily life. Winslow Homer painted “Along the Road, Bahamas” (1885) while traveling through the Caribbean, in this case, Jamaica. It’s a remarkable watercolor study and sympathetic to its subject, a woman of African descent.
Greene notes that watercolor can be unforgiving. One mistake, and the canvas gets thrown out.
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Around a corner, she thinks that Georgia O’Keeffe’s “My Backyard” (1945) will surprise folks. The show used it in its promotional materials. In person, the compressed New Mexico landscape on a petite canvas represents an achievement for the artist.
“We know she was particularly proud of this painting because she’s making something small as good as something large,” Greene says.
In “American Scenes,” Alice Neal and Guy Pène Du Bois transport viewers to a different sort of vastness in New York, where city dwellers live on top of one another.
“American Modernism from the Charles Butt Collection” at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.
Big names such as Mark Rothko, Ellsworth Kelly and Joan Mitchell gather in the final gallery of “American Modernism’s” ‘New Directions.’
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Greene feels that a section of works by Jasper John, including a suite of six lithographs on paper, creates a fitting conclusion to the collection.
“I like the idea of Jasper Johns adding a postscript tension,” she says. “He ends the show with a pair of flags. For America’s 250th anniversary, it’s the perfect coda. It’s a new question: either/or?”