"Frida: The Making of an Icon" opens at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, US
19 January 2026
The exhibition, conceived and organized by MFAH curator Mari Carmen Ramírez, follows Frida Kahlo's posthumous journey from a little-known painter to a worldwide celebrity.
Frida: The Making of an Icon, which features 35 pieces by Frida Kahlo that encapsulate the arc of her artistic legacy, places Kahlo and her creations in the context of works by five successive generations of artists: painters, sculptors, and photographers from a variety of artistic and social communities and movements, who used Kahlo's paintings and life story to claim her as their own.
Important contributions from the ICAA (International Center for the Arts of the Americas) Documents Project archives at the MFAH and Museo Frida Kahlo in Mexico City will be highlighted. Additional context for the artworks is provided by photographs and archival material, such as the artist's clothes, jewelry, and other personal items taken from Kahlo's personal collections and other sources.
More than 200 items created by the mass-market, worldwide production of Frida Kahlo merchandise will be on display in a gallery dedicated to "Fridamania."
"Frida: The Making of an Icon" attempts to separate Frida Kahlo the artist from Frida Kahlo the phenomenon,” says Mari Carmen Ramírez, Wortham Curator of Latin American Art at the MFAH and founding director of the Museum’s International Center for the Arts of the Americas (ICAA). “The exhibition reveals how the different facets of Kahlo’s complex persona(lity), which she so carefully crafted and projected, were adapted again and again over her decades-long transformation into an icon. As a result, her image became subsumed within the desires, fears and hopes of artists and activists who transformed it into innovative proposals that transcend their source of inspiration while commenting on pressing issues of their place and time. In exploring that process, the exhibition re-establishes Kahlo’s own identity, and asserts her persistent relevance to contemporary art as well as activism over the past 70 years.”
Other detailed info at this link.
Click the link below for the exhibition website.
