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Leaders of the Art Car Museum announced their intention to close after nearly 30 years in its Houston Heights location, according to a statement on its website. The announcement comes not long after both the museum’s founders, Ann O’Connor Williams Harithas and her husband James Harithas, passed away in 2021 and 2023. 

The Art Car Museum is a contemporary art museum that was founded in 1998 to showcase the growing art car movement, which, according to the Art Car manifesto published by James Harithas in 1997, turns cars from a “factory-made commodity into a personal statement or expression,” and represents the changes in “popular consciousness.” 

The Art Car Museum mixes the traditions of fine, folk and public art together to cultivate its aesthetic, and it exhibits not just art cars and other vehicles, but also artwork of other mediums from artists around the world. 

The museum’s founder, Ann Harithas, comes from a legacy Texas ranching and oil family, and has founded two other museums with her husband James, The Station Museum in Houston (which has been temporarily closed since 2022) and the Five Points Museum of Contemporary Art in Victoria, Texas. 

The Art Car and Five Points Museums have been kept alive by a trust that Ann Harithas’ children opened after her death in 2021, in order to fund the two years of exhibitions she had planned, according to a story in Texas Monthly on the family. But the couple did not create their own foundation before their deaths to keep the three museums going, nor did they leave instructions for their heirs on what to do with the properties. The futures of each museum are uncertain, although there is reportedly an emphasis on keeping the Victoria museum in operation above the other two.

There have been alleged talks with local and regional art organizations on how to continue the Art Car Museum’s legacy, according to the museum’s website. When available, those in charge will share the details publicly, the statement reads.

Art Cars are vehicles that have been modified as artworks based on the personal expression of their owners. They have often been emblematic of counterculture themes since the movement’s beginnings in 1975, a time when many American-made cars dominated the market, according to Harithas’ manifesto.

The Art Car movement intended to “(rescue) the automobile from corporate uniformity,” Harithas wrote, and show the changing cultural and social influences on American culture. Art Cars found their inspiration in the low-riders and hippie vans, which were popularly outfitted to various degrees in the 1960s and 1970s, according to Harithas’ manifesto. 

Houston, which is known to some as the Art Car capital of the world, is also home to an Art Car Parade, which brings patrons from across the country to showcase their art cars, and has had famous grand marshals, like comedian Dan Aykroyd, and locally famous grand marshals, like former Mayor Annise Parker, who led the parade twice.

This year’s parade and its host of events is set to take place between April 11-14, according to the event’s website. The actual parade will begin at 2 p.m. on April 13, and the Art Car Ball, a music festival, will take place April 12 from 6 p.m. to 11 p.m., including headliner Heartbyrne, a Talking Heads tribute band. The grand marshal of the 2024 event has yet to be announced.

The Art Car Museum will close after April 28, the last day it plans to be open to the public, according to the website. Anyone who visits the museum during its last two months will see its last exhibition, the retrospective dedicated to its founder, Ann Harithias. 

The retrospective, called “The Creative Era of Ann Harithas,” is a collection of her personal collage works, Art Car creations and some that she commissioned or collected, according to the museum’s website. It was originally on display at the Five Points Museum before opening at the Art Car Museum in fall 2023.

The Art Car Museum is open 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Wednesday through Sunday, and admission is free, but by appointment only. Appointments can be made by calling 713-861-5526 or emailing artcarmuseum@gmail.com.