FREE Admission
Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, 1001 Bissonnet
In collaboration with the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, the Menil Collection, Glasstire, and Documentary Alliance

The Cool School documents a period nearing the end of the 1940s when a small but determined band of painters, curators and collectors on the West Coast were determined to make themselves known. Filmmaker Morgan Neville examines the rise of the Los Angeles art scene and how it brought a new and vigorously American slant to contemporary painting. Neville profiles Walter Hopps and Irving Blum, owners of the Ferus Gallery, which championed the new school of Los Angeles art; sculptors Ed Kienholz and Larry Bell and painters Ed Ruscha, John Altoon and Billy Al Bengston, all of whom were championed by the Ferus Gallery; architect Frank Gehry, whose ideas dovetailed with those of the new L.A. artists; and Dennis Hopper and Dean Stockwell, actors and Hollywood bohemians whose love of the new L.A. art (and willingness to buy pieces) provided crucial support for a struggling movement. Jeff Bridges narrates. MFA screenings of The Cool School continue at 7 p.m. Friday, December 7 and 7 p.m. Friday, December 14.