An 18-foot-long, ribbon and flower filled homecoming mum will serve as an appropriate marker for the return of a San Antonio museum tasked with preserving and sharing Texan cultures and traditions.
The University of Texas at San Antonio’s Institute of Texan Cultures has found a new home at the Frost Tower — located at 111 W. Houston St., Suite 100, facing Camaron Street — and will reopen its doors to the public starting on Jan. 29.. Admission will be free during its opening weekend.
ITC officials hope that new and returning exhibits, one of which will feature the Texas-sized mum, will provide new experiences and nostalgic moments for visitors.
“I think what they’ll recognize is the commitment to storytelling,” said Monica Perales, associate vice provost for the institute. “There will be some things that are very familiar; Our iconic neon flag, we knew that had to come with us… And she’s been refurbished and is shining even more brightly.”
The long-awaited move was a controversial one for the institute as the plans to demolish its original home at the Texas Pavilion were met with a lawsuit by those who argued for the preservation of the HemisFair ’68-era building.
The Frost Tower suite was originally presented as a temporary home for the institute by UT San Antonio officials, who said they were assessing locations near the upcoming sports arena development for its permanent home. University officials did not respond to a request for an update on future plans.
A move in the making
The Institute of Texan Cultures closed its doors to the public in 2024. After evaluating the possibility of keeping the museum at the Texas Pavilion, UT San Antonio officials opted instead to find a new home for the museum and its historical artifacts.
The pavilion was one of the last remaining buildings dating back to the HemisFair in 1968. Once the World Fair ended it began housing the museum. About 96 acres of downtown land that included the pavilion, were then passed along to the UT System, but the property would not be developed for university purposes for many years.
In 2019, the UT Board of Regents approved a master plan for the expansion of UT San Antonio in the downtown district. The plan called for a self-sufficient campus that provided students a full university experience without having to travel to the main campus on the Northwest Side of the city for research space or amenities.
The expansion gave way to the San Pedro I building along Dolorosa Street, which opened its doors in 2023 housing the School of Data Science. San Pedro II, a building adjacent to the San Pedro I, is slated to open this spring housing programs in the fields of AI, cybersecurity, computing and data science.
This expansion, however, didn’t include the about 14 acres in which the Texas Pavilion sat on. The sale of this portion of the property to the city of San Antonio was instead later approved by the board of regents in 2025.
Questions over the future of the Texas Pavilion arose well before the sale as university officials began surveying the potential use or value of university-owned land. In 2020, university officials began a survey process of the museum and in 2021 the ITC Centennial Initiative explored three scenarios for the future of the museum and its location.
Scenario one called for the museum to relocate outside the Hemisfair District; Scenario two called for the museum to leave the Texas Pavilion but remain in the Hemisfair District; The third option called for it to remain at the Texas Pavilion.
Veronica Salazar, then vice president of business affairs and chief enterprise development officer at UT San Antonio, oversaw this process before her retirement at the end of 2025.
University officials moved to demolish the Texas Pavilion and explore ways to stay near the Hemisfair District, a decision Salazar said involved more than a physical location but the future of potential exhibits.
The original facility could not be accredited to bring national exhibits due to its size, Salazar said in 2024 during a bigcitysmalltown podcast interview with Bob Rivard.
“That is the one critical component for the museum,” Salazar said during the interview. “We have a relationship with the Smithsonian, but we can’t bring any of the exhibits because the facility does not allow for the necessary requirements… That’s always going to hinder the growth of the museum itself.”
This was a contentious change, prompting a lawsuit from the Conservation Society of San Antonio, which argued for the historical preservation of the structure and pointed to the site’s connection to the City of San Antonio’s Project Marvel. The plan to build a $1.3 billion NBA arena for the Spurs has since been approved and is underway.
Pleas by the conservation group to halt the demolition were eventually squashed, with a judge granting lawsuit immunity to the city and the university. The demolition of the 180,000-square-foot pavilion continued over the spring of 2025.
Shining brightly
Over the past 18 months, Perales and her team, which included student workers, were tasked with the seemingly impossible task of rehoming what once fit in a 180,000 square-foot space, into the now 8,000 square-foot location.
With just over 5,000 square feet of gallery space, the team had to get creative with what and how they would present exhibits and the many objects that the museum already possessed.
Museum officials opted for having two main galleries: One permanent that will host “Common Threads,” an exhibition that centers around home and family life, as well as the culture, arts, traditions and community, and a second gallery that will feature traveling exhibitions twice a year.
The first traveling exhibit is titled “Mumentous: The upsizing of a Texas Tradition” featuring the traditional homecoming mums. This exhibit was brought to San Antonio through a collaboration with the Arlington Museum of Art.
“For us it’s an opportunity to connect with the community, to collaborate with our partners to build new exhibits and to try new ways of telling stories,” Perales said. “So we’re excited to have something that’s dynamic and evolving.”
A permanent home
The Frost Tower location was talked about as a temporary home for the museum, with the goal to eventually buy or lease a property near the Crockett Hotel or a Hemisfair-area venue, which is eventually expected to attract a higher number of visitors.
Perales could not provide updates on the planned duration of their stay at the Frost Tower, but said they are moving forward with the accreditation process through the American Alliance of Museums.
Although it’s a rigorous and lengthy process, Perales said it gives way to many more opportunities as it would place the museum among some of the best in the country.
“Accredited museums do adhere to the highest standards of collections preservation, community engagement, transparency,” she said. “These are markers of sort of the high caliber of experience that people will encounter in a museum.”
With the Frost Tower location a few blocks away from San Pedro I and II, Perales said they hope students of all backgrounds get to interact with the museum by either visiting, or participating in educational programming in the future.
“I’m a history professor by training,” she said. “I really believe that great universities have great museums. [Museums] are not only the doorway for the public to come in and experience the university, but also a way [to give] students experiences that are meaningful, that will help them learn and discover.”
The San Antonio Report partners with Open Campus on higher education coverage.
