The Contemporary Arts Museum Houston is a non-collecting institution dedicated to presenting the best and most exciting international, national and regional art of the last 40 years.

The Contemporary Arts Museum Houston was founded in 1948 by a group of seven Houston citizens to present new art and to document its role in modern life through exhibitions, lectures and other activities. The Museum's first exhibitions were presented at various sites throughout the city, such as The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, and included This is Contemporary Art and L. Maholy-Nagy: Memorial Exhibition.

The success of these first efforts led in 1950 to the building of a small, professionally equipped facility where ambitious exhibitions of the work of Vincent Van Gogh, Joan Miró, Alexander Calder, Max Ernst, and John Biggers and his students from the then-fledgling Texas Negro College (now Texas Southern University), reflected Houston's receptiveness to new ideas.