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Picasso and Friends at MFAH T he Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, rolls out a pilgrimage- worthy exhibition starring the titans o f m o d e r n i s m : " P i c a s s o – K l e e – M a t i s s e : Masterpieces from the Museum Berggruen." The MFAH is the first American museum to debut the celebrated collection assembled over more than a half-century by legendary gallerist, collector, print publisher, and connoisseur Heinz Berggruen (1914-2007), whose Paris gallery (1947-1980) was de rigueur for art seekers in the Cy … sigh O ne of the touchstones of The Menil Collection is Cy Twombly. The late American expat artist ( 1 9 2 8 – 2 0 1 1 ) , w h o lived and worked between Italy and his native Lexington, Virginia, is extolled on the Menil campus in the Cy Twombly Gallery, which was designed, like the Menil, by Renzo Piano. Having marked its 30th anniversary last year, the gallery stands as a pilgrimage site. A rare museum devoted to a single artist — analogous of the MDI. Thirty-some works on paper, dating 1954 to 1986, illuminate stages of Twombly's practice, including rare collages from 1970 and 1975; classic "blackboards" from 1970; and lush flower studies and landscapes of the 1980s. The latter nod to Cy Twombly Gallery's five-part Analysis of the Rose as Sentimental Despair and Green Paintings from the same era. Why you need to go: "The Gift of Drawing" allows for contemplation of a master who collapsed time between the ancient world and today, while forging an original, enigmatic language where text was distilled into its essence, and poetry became both form and object alighting across page or canvas. The MDI's Edouard Kopp curates. Through August 9, menil.org. Catherine D. Anspon Arnold Newman, Pablo Picasso, 1954, at Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. Left: Pablo Picasso, Still Life before a Window, Saint Raphaël, 1919, at Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. MFAH. © ARNOLD NEWMAN PROPERTIES VIA GETTY IMAGES. THE MENIL COLLECTION, HOUSTON. © CY TWOMBLY FOUNDATION. 14 artist's death. The show also unveils a touchstone of Berggruen's collection: deft watercolors by Swiss-German talent Paul Klee, whom the late gallerist described as conjuring "a world of secrets, of phantasmagorias and dreams, a world that is magical." Finally, the exhibition rewards the viewer with a collection of Matisse cutouts; Berggruen broke ground as the first dealer to present the series, mounting an exhibition in his Paris gallery in 1953. Through September 13, mfah.org. Catherine D. Anspon post-war period. Berggruen's remarkable trove of 20th-century greats — not only Picasso, Klee, Matisse, but also Giacometti, Cézanne, and Braque — was bequeathed to the German state in 2000. Today, these art-historical riches are housed in an eponymous museum in Berlin, the city of Berggruen's birth. At the MFAH, nearly 100 masterworks include Picassos spanning almost 70 years, from a 1904 Blue Period portrait to Seated Nude with Raised Arms, 1972, rendered in geometric cutouts completed months before the to The Warhol in Pittsburgh — the Cy Twombly Gallery showcases five decades of paintings and sculptures including the heroic 52-feet wide 1994 canvas Untitled (Say Goodbye, Catullus, to the Shores of Asia Minor), which encapsulates the artist's calling cards — mark-making, time travel, and text fragments, beginning with inspiration from f i r s t - c e n t u r y B C Roman poet Catullus. This season, Twombly devotees are rewarded with a pendant viewing option, also on the museum campus, when the Menil Drawing Institute unveils a peek at recent gifts from the artist's foundation, presented in the intimate galleries Cy Twombly, Untitled, 1986, at The Menil Collection MUSEUM BERGGRUEN, NEUE NATIONALGALERIE, BERLIN. © 2026 ESTATE OF PABLO PICASSO / ARS, NY.