Pick Three Plus One

Masterpieces from the Museum Berggruen, Henrique Oliveira and Katsumi Hayakawa at McClain Gallery, Kaima Marie Akarue at Jonathan Hopson Gallery, and Brandon Willis at the El Dorado Ballroom.

Welcome to Pick Three Plus One, a semi-regular series of posts highlighting gallery shows, museum exhibits, and other cultural happenings in Houston, TX, plus one additional event, band, book, film, or whatever that has captured my attention. (As always, I’d like to say hello to and thank my new subscribers. I hope you enjoy the writing!)

1. Picasso – Klee – Matisse: Masterpieces from the Museum Berggruen at MFAH

(Pablo Picasso, Dora Maar with Green Fingernails, 1936, oil on canvas, Museum Berggruen, Neue Nationalgalerie. © 2026, Estate of Pablo Picasso / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.)

Now on view at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, through September 13, 2026, is a beautifully curated selection of modern masterworks on loan from the Museum Berggruen in Berlin. While the Museum Berggruen is closed for renovations, its collection is touring internationally, and the MFAH is the first U.S. stop.

Between the 1940s and the 1990s, Heinz Berggruen amassed hundreds of modern masterworks, many of them directly from the artists. Along with paintings, drawings, and sculptures by Picasso, Matisse, and Klee — an artist rarely shown in the U.S. — is a selection of breathtaking sculptures by Alberto Giacometti, works by Georges Braque and Paul Cezanne, and three haunting landscapes by pioneering artist and photographer Dora Maar. (These and a handful of other pieces come from the MFAH’s collection.) The inclusion of Maar is significant, for she, like Braque, was a true collaborator of Picasso. (Apparently, long after her and Picasso’s relationship came to an end, Maar kept Dora Maar with Green Fingernails hung above her fireplace, a truly frightening scenario for any curator, historian, or conservator.)

The works in the exhibit are installed thematically, revealing how these artists were influenced by and conversed with each other through their respective mediums. In gallery after gallery, there is a welcome balance between historical investigation and the pure sensual experience of looking at sumptuous art, and you don’t have to travel to Europe to experience it!

2. Henrique Oliveira and Katsumi Hayakawa at McClain Gallery

(Henrique Oliveira, Xilempasto 15, 2021, plywood and pigments.)

Meanwhile, McClain Gallery is showing new and recent works by two very different artists: Brazilian-born sculptor, installation artist, and painter Henrique Oliveira and Japanese artist Katsumi Hayakawa, whose work encompasses paintings and cut-paper sculptures.

Oliveira’s London Works include relatively large, wall-mounted sculptures of meticulously bent plywood, which seem to continue to twist and morph before your eyes, like dramatic strokes of paint across a three-dimensional canvas captured in real time. To my eyes, there’s an intense, almost threatening quality to these works, which simultaneously look like the fantastical creatures of the natural world and artfully composed detritus of an abandoned civilization. Complementing these sculptures are a series of smaller-scale impasto paintings, which feel much gentler and less turbulent.

(Katsumi Hayakawa, Void, 2025, acrylic on panel.)

Hayakawa’s Constellations of Matter brings together highly detailed paintings and hand-crafted paper and mixed-media works into a body of work that, to quote the McClain Gallery website, “plays with the compositional idea of void vs. solid to amplify spatial relationships between alternative realities and metropolitan spaces.” Reading that statement, I am reminded of Rumi’s “Poem of the Atoms,” which describes how every atom in the universe, including those that make up a drop of paint, is dancing, and how the whirling dervish dance is a portal between the earthly and cosmic worlds. (Can a painting be a portal?) While my guess is Hayakawa’s spiritual beliefs lean more toward Buddhism than Sufism, there is an ecumenical quality present in this work. Hayakawa’s art embodies a prayer-like stillness, born out of the speed- and tech-obsessed physical and virtual spaces of our modern age.

3. Kaima Marie Akarue at Jonathan Hopson Gallery

(Kaima Marie Akarue, 𝘎𝘪𝘳𝘭𝘴 𝘪𝘯 𝘗𝘪𝘯𝘬, 𝘋𝘢𝘬𝘢𝘳, 𝘚𝘦𝘯𝘦𝘨𝘢𝘭 (detail), 2025, hand-cut collage featuring inkjet-printed elements on heavyweight bright-white alkaline bond.)

One of the joys of writing about art is meeting and interviewing an artist, and then watching their work evolve as the years go by.

I interviewed Houston artist Kaima Marie Akarue for Houston CityBook in 2024, not long after first encountering her work at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston in an expansive exhibit of modern and contemporary art work titled Multiplicity: Blackness in Contemporary American Collage. Akarue, a nationally exhibited artist, had a solo show that same year at Art Is Bond. I described Akarue’s collages in that show as “a multiverse of beloved Houston landmarks, presented in dizzying Cubist perspectives; ornate interior spaces filled with paintings, books, and records — all stuff we use to document and preserve personal, family, and collective histories; and human figures, including members of Marie’s family, whose presence adds yet another quizzical layer to these already densely packed works.” Since then, the subject matter explored in her art has continued to expand.

The works in Akarue’s latest exhibition, Under the Atlantic Veil, on view at Jonathan Hopson Gallery through March 31, were created during and shortly after traveling to Dakar for her 2025 Black Rock Senegal artist residency, a prestigious, multidisciplinary program founded by renowned artist Kehinde Wiley. It’s clear from looking at the art that her time in Dakar was life-changing. Of the collage above, 𝘎𝘪𝘳𝘭𝘴 𝘪𝘯 𝘗𝘪𝘯𝘬, 𝘋𝘢𝘬𝘢𝘳, 𝘚𝘦𝘯𝘦𝘨𝘢l, Akarue writes on Instagram: “The Atlantic rarely reflects soft pink hues, but on multiple occasions during my stay, I witnessed a pink ocean. . .The girls in pink symbolize resilience and joy, a quiet reflection of how beauty endures even within shifting tides of place, access, and belonging.”

Under the Atlantic Veil closes May 31. Hours for Jonathan Hopson Gallery are by appointment only.

+ The Biggest Brandon: The Biggest Love

(Houston singer-songwriter, pianist, and composer Brandon Willis.)

Houston singer-songwriter The Biggest Brandon, a.k.a. Brandon Willis came to my attention thanks to vibraphonist Jalen Baker, who executive produced Willis’s gorgeous and ambitious new album, The Biggest Love. The album, released under the name The Biggest Brandon, drops May 21 across all streaming platforms. To celebrate the release, on Sunday, May 24th, Willis will lead an ensemble of stellar Houston musicians in an “immersive” performance at the at the historic Eldorado Ballroom.

Willis and Baker grew up just blocks away from each other in Houston’s Third Ward and met while attending Kinder High School for the Performing and Visual Arts (HSPVA). “We spent years shedding together,” says Willis, “experimenting musically, and pushing each other creatively while trying to find new ways to apply all of our classical and formal training into something fresh and personal.”

Willis’s connection to jazz intrigued me, but there are also strong gospel and hip-hop influences in the textures and energy behind his singing and songwriting. (Willis is an award-winning, state-recognized choir director at The Rhodes School for the Performing Arts. And Houston rapper God Body Bingo contributed to the lyrics.) Willis doesn’t scream. But he does sizzle. To my ears, fans of Take 6, Stevie Wonder, and smoother tracks by the late great D’Angelo will find plenty of joy in the lush, stacked harmonies on The Biggest Love. For the El Dorado Ballroom show, Willis will be joined by vocalists Zmaji Glamouratti, Bee Honey, and M3CCA on arrangements Willis describes as more “condensed and direct” for a live performance, while maintaining the emotional weight of the melodies and lyrics.

Along with Baker on percussion (including, I’m guessing, handclaps on the flamenco-infused “Love Me You Lie”), The Biggest Love features keyboardist and Blue Note Records recording artist Paul Cornish on piano and Hammond B3. “Paul is one of the most gifted musicians I know,” says Willis, “but beyond that, he has an incredible spirit that comes through in every note he plays.” Cornish, another HSPVA alum, has played with Baker for years, and their “musical symbiosis” can be heard throughout the album.

The El Dorado Ballroom show will be preceded by live panel discussion with Kam Franklin (lead singer of The Suffers), Chelsea Lenora Wright (singer-songwriter and Editor-in-Chief of the Forward Times), multidisciplinary visual artist Randy Wrosiv, and God Body Bingo. The panel will be moderated by Harrison Guy, Director of Arts & Culture for the Fifth Ward Cultural Arts District and founder of Urban Souls Dance Company. Tickets are available to purchase in advance online.