Best of Untitled Art, Houston: The IN SITU Selection

Houston's fall season has a new anchor. Untitled Art, founded in 2012 on the sands of Miami Beach, returns to Houston for its second edition, October 2 to 4 at the George R. Brown Convention Center downtown, with a VIP and press preview on October 1. This year the fair has grown to 98 galleries from 20 countries and territories. Its strongest idea, though, is what happens beyond the booths. Under founder Jeffrey Lawson, Houston director Michael Slenske and executive director Clara Andrade, Untitled has built its Houston edition in close conversation with the local art community. The result is a program that reaches into churches, universities and neighborhoods across the city.

Here are the four moments we would not miss.

Art in Action: Artists, Communities, and Houston

October 1, 4–5pm, Podcast Lounge at the fair

Start with the conversation that frames everything else. Michele Leal, board chair of the Houston Arts Alliance, moderates a panel with artist and community builder Harrison Guy, Jack Massing of The Orange Show Center for Visionary Art, and Rachel Mohl, who leads public art for the University of Houston System. They will discuss how artists work with the communities around them, and how public and community-based art shapes Houston's sense of itself. The talk is recorded live for the Untitled Art Podcast, and it is a good primer for a city whose art life often happens outside museum walls.

Rana Begum in Conversation with Frauke V. Josenhans

October 2, 6–7pm, The Ismaili Center, 2323 Allen Parkway

The London-based artist Rana Begum works where sculpture, painting and architecture meet. She draws on the city around her and on the geometry of Islamic art and architecture, and her pieces catch and scatter light so that they change as you move. Her new site-specific commission, No. 1573 Reflectors, now lives in the East Atrium of the Ismaili Center's permanent collection. Begum will discuss it with Frauke V. Josenhans, deputy director and chief curator at the Dora Maar Cultural Center, who previously curated Begum's outdoor Mesh commissions at Rice University's Moody Center for the Arts. An evening for anyone interested in how a building and an artwork can be in dialogue.

JooYoung Choi, WE CAN MAKE IT IF WE TRY, The Journey of Poundcake Man and Emma Poundcake Girl (2024)

Special Project, Inman Gallery, on the fair floor

For more than a decade, the Houston artist JooYoung Choi has been building the Cosmic Womb, a fictional universe of science fiction and fantasy through which she explores identity, belonging, trauma and resilience. This sculptural installation follows Poundcake Man, a character inspired by Choi's birth father. He is abducted and manipulated by the villainous Viridian Crown, then recovers his memory and finds his way back to his daughter Emma. What looks at first like a joyful, candy-colored world is really a story about the courage it takes to face the past and break cycles that cause harm. The Cosmic Womb's motto, "Have Faith For You Have Always Been Loved," sums up its spirit. Tender, generous, and one of the fair's most personal works.

Blue Bones: Third Ward Community Walk with Reynier Leyva Novo

October 4, 11am–12pm, meet at the Judy Cook Building, University of Houston, 3922 Anita Street

Houston-based artist Reynier Leyva Novo is covering existing buildings, structures and architectural remains across Third Ward in cobalt blue. The blue marks the neighborhood's histories of survival, loss and urban change in the very places where they happened. Presented by PAC Public as a Special Project of the fair, Blue Bones is linked to Open Archive: Third Ward, a growing collection of photographs, documents and stories contributed by residents. The project is a partnership with Greater Zion Baptist Church, Re-Ward Third Ward, the University of Houston's Center for Public History and Center for Arts and Humanities, and the Judy Cook Building, with historian Raúl A. Ramos as coordinator and history lead. The public launch is October 2 and the Sunday-morning walk follows on October 4. For those who want more, a community presentation and film screening takes place on October 20. It is the best way to end the fair: on foot, in the neighborhood, listening.

Practical

• Untitled Art, Houston: October 2–4, 2026 (VIP and press preview October 1)

• George R. Brown Convention Center, downtown Houston

• Tickets and hotels: untitledartfairs.com