Houston Museum District 

• Fourth largest museum district in the country with 18 museums within walking distance.

Houston Theater District

• Houston is one of only a few cities in the U.S. with resident professional companies in the four disciplines of the performing arts—ballet, opera, symphony and theater.

Alley Theatre

• Winner of the Regional Theatre Tony Award (1996).

Byzantine Fresco Chapel Museum

• Holds the only intact Byzantine frescoes in the Western Hemisphere.

The Children's Museum of Houston 

• Listed as one of the 10 Best Children's Museums to Visit This Summer by Woman's Day (2011).
• Named the No. 1 children's museum in the country by Parents magazine (2011).
• Ranked as the No. 2 children's museum in the country by Child magazine and No. 1 by MSN.com.
• Named one of the top four children's museums in the U.S. by CheapOStay.com (2009).

The Health Museum 

• The most visited health museum in the country.

Houston Ballet

• Hailed by The New York Times as "...one of the nation's best ballet companies" (1997).

Houston Grand Opera

• The only opera company in the world which can boast Grammy, Tony and Emmy awards.
• Houston Grand Opera Studio artist Nathaniel Peake won the Zarzuela prize and
  Studio alumnus Ryan McKinny won the Birgit Nilsson prize at Plácido Domingo’s Operalia
  competition, founded to discover and honor the best new young opera singers of today in the most prestigious and competitive forum in the world. Peake and McKinny were the only Americans to win in the competition.

Houston Museum of Natural Science 

• Ranked No. 7 in ForbesTraveler.com's list of the 25 most visited museums in the U.S. (2009).

The Menil Collection 

• Ranked as the second most important building constructed since 1980 in Vanity Fair's World Architecture Survey (2010).
• Included in Vanity Fair's Art Universe, a map of the international art scene, as one of the editors' favorite places to visit (2006). 

Museum of Fine Arts, Houston

• With 1.125 million visitors in 2010, MFAH ranks as the 8th most visited art museum in the U.S., according to statistics released by The Art Newspaper.
• 2004's Inverted Utopias: Avant-Garde Art in Latin America was named one of the decade's most important shows by The New York Times (2010).
• The largest art museum in the Southwest

Rothko Chapel

• Named one of the 10 most mind-blowing, energizing, unorthodox and flat-out cool places to experience art in America by GQ (2010).
• Listed by Yahoo! Travel as one of the top 10 U.S. places to see before you die (2008).
• On National Geographic's list of the world's "most sacred places."
• The only ecumenical center of its kind in the world.

Theatre Under the Stars 

• One of the largest nonprofit producers of musical theater in America.

Click here for details about the economic impact of the arts in Houston.