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PRIVATE COLLECTION, HOUSTON Julian Schnabel's outsized talent was spotted early on by director James Harithas, who gave the UH grad his first museum show in 1976; shown Portrait of Bob Wilson, 1984. PRIVATE COLLECTION, HOUSTON Cindy Sherman made her museum debut at CAMH, 1980, with staged portraits such as Untitled Film Still (Hitchhiker), 1979. Gilbert & George, exhibited 1984, were among the greatest hits of the Linda Cathcart years. The artists' Young, 1983. "HOUSTON'S 'FIRE' SHOW, JUST OPENED AT THE CONTEMPORARY ARTS MUSEUM, IS BOTH HOT AND BRIGHT, LIGHTING UP THE MUSEUM WITH 100 WORKS OF ART FROM 100 ARTISTS THE FIRSTS — MIMI CROSSLEY, HOUSTON POST, SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 25, 1979 PRIVATE COLLECTION, HOUSTON ORGANIZED JAMES SURLS." The Gorilla Girls needn't look here. Nor the African-American community complain. Another hallmark of programming throughout the decades has been an emphasis on diversity, often hard won. (Harithas relayed the story of how his first Latino artist showing at the CAMH led to a fist fight in the 1970s, when that artist was reluctant to have his work taken down after the show's run; admiring the brawling director was his future wife, Ann, who fell in love after observing his prowess defending his turf in a old-fashioned street skirmish). Shows that defined this inclusive policy include "Painting, Sculpture, Ceramics by the Students and Faculty of Texas Southern University (1953, in the era before desegregation); "Mexican Painting and Drawing" (1953); the aforementioned Dorothy Hood (1970); Contemporary Black Artists (1970); Suzanne Paul (1976); Marisol (1977); Chicano Art (1977); the striking text-based painting of Barbara Kruger (1985); Benito Huerta (1990); Agnes Martin (1993); and the not-to-beforgotten performance of a multi-ton ice sculpture by Bert Long Jr. in 1992 to celebrate his triumphant return from his Rome Prize Residency. Other artists who have explored the African-American experience with sensitivity include Nancy O'Connor, whose photographic installation "Milam's Journey" chronicled black cowboys in Victoria (1985-86). The hire in 2000 of curator Valerie Cassel Oliver also signaled an emphasis in diversity; her signature shows have ranged from "Radical Presence: Black Performance" (2012-13) to a retrospective for the only black member of the Fluxus movement, Benjamin Patterson (2010-11). Digging through the CAMH archives, online and offsite, reveals rich images, newspaper dossiers and catalogs for progressive shows that museum directors crafted and boards green-lighted including: Vincent van Gogh (1951, which the de Menils helped organize); Max Ernst (1952, again the de Menils stepped in); Frank Gehry came to CAMH for his Mark Rothko (1957); Francis Bacon epic exhibition, (1964); Josef Albers (1965); John 1987. Chamberlain (1975, well before his de Menil fame; his CAMH show, fabricated in Amarillo on Stanley Marsh's ranch then trucked to town for its museum debut, later became the core of his permanent installation at the Chinati Foundation, Marfa); Bill Viola (1988); Ann Hamilton (1997); Jenny Holzer (1997); Dorothy Hood got her due in "Recent Paintings," 1970. James Turrell (1998); and Yoko One (2001). One of the first shows that shocked me in its Robert Rauschenberg's Barge, 1962utter simplicity was Fred 1963 (left), a 32-foot-long "Combine" painting, graced the A-frame, 1965. Sandback's in 1989, a decade before his exhibit at DIA. Twenty later, the string installation — monochromatic filaments of yarn that seemed to disappear in the CAMH's vast geometric interiors — is still unforgettable. Also defiant (and possibly setting director Suzanne Delehanty on her way out of town) was the performance of a singe piece of music for 24 hours, a perfect response to Sandback extreme minimalism and a nod to an longstanding commitment to performance. AROUND THE STATE … BY GUEST CURATOR American modernist Gyula Kosice. Other big and generous shows were the Robert Rauschenberg three-venue retrospective in 1998 that included a gurgling mud bath and, four decades earlier, a solo for Rauschenberg where his 32-foot-long Barge combine painting anchored a wall of the museum's original A-frame (1965), as well as provocative Rauschenberg performance with John Cage (1981-82). Also still talked about is the debut for Brit duo Gilbert & George (a Delehanty-mounted show in 1984), which is still considered a high in all-time smartness, which later segued into presenting the YBAs in "Brilliant! New Art from London," including the outrageous Chapman Brothers and Tracey Emin (1996). STRING THEORY PRIVATE COLLECTION 27, 1972). They certainly were new directions, with avant-garde components including a fly-by of the Goodyear Blimp sporting a design by participating artist Michael Snow; a wave of water in a 200-foot long ditch along Montrose mimicking meteorological phenomenon by Vera Simons in collaboration with St. Thomas University's Institute for Storm Research; and Survival Farm by still-going-strong eco pioneer Newton Harrison, incorporating 50 varieties of plants, freshwater and saltwater fish. Any one of these would be considered novel and enthralling today. But the one that brought down the house, grossed out the audience and resulted in the resignation of the promising director Adler later that year was San Diego artist Ellen Van Fleet's life-cycle piece. A series of stacked cages, vertically tiered, featured startling inhabitants: 100 female rats, 50 kittens, 50 pigeons, 200 mice and cockroaches. Forevermore, this would be known as "The Roach Show" in the CAMH annals. Adler's successor, Jim Harithas — who tapped conceptual food artist Antoni Miralda (a forerunner to today's fascination with art and banqueting memorialized in the Blaffer's "Feast" for example — was also too much for the board. When Miralda's show opened on October 28, 1977, it featured a bank of Rainbow Bread dyed in vivid colors and a scheduled performance by the Kilgore Rangerettes. The mayhem that broke out still is the stuff of legend and led to Harithas' resignation. Those attending openings in the '70s and '80s, were the first museumgoers in the world to see Cindy Sherman's films stills (1980) and Julian Schnabel's plate-strewn canvases (1976), the latter tapped by Harithas. A decade earlier, the CAMH prophetically had light and color on its radar, mounting "Light in Art," a 1966 group show that included Latin TEXAS ON FIRE Throughout was an undercurrent of interest in Texas, which was first ignited by Jim Harithas, who forever transformed the dynamics of what happened at the CAMH. Major shows for notables who would never be merely local have been a constant: Dorothy Hood (1970), The Art Guys (1995), Rachel Hecker (1995), Vernon Fisher (1989) and, above all, the raucous "Fire" organized by James Surls in 1979. That forerunner to the MFAH's "Fresh Paint" the next decade proved that the energy of our scene was both primal and worthy. Occasionally that energy finds its way back to the museum, as in then curator Toby Kamp's "Houston: No Zoning," (2009). This was a high point of my coverage of the scene, while the catalog remains one of the staples of a Texas art library for its fascinating timeline of pop-up spaces throughout our town before the word pop-up even existed. THE TRIUMPH OF DIVERSITY TWO BUILDINGS, 7 DECADES: A TIMELINE 1948: The Contemporary Arts Association was founded during a meeting in the home of Walter I. Farmer, who went on to become the CAA's first president. On October 31, the fledging organization mounted its first show in borrowed space at the MFAH. 1949: On November 13, the CAA opens its first show in its new home titled the Contemporary Arts Museum (Houston was added to the name in the mid-1990s) on borrowed land ... For more capsule history of the CAMH, peruse this feature online, papercitymag.com. Houston artist Jim Love also wore a curatorial hat; shown The Bear as Heffalump, 1972, from his first museum show the following year.