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For Austin residents, Haas Brothers: Uncanny Valley is more than a touring museum exhibition. It is a homecoming for two artists whose imaginative, irreverent style was shaped in part by the city’s creative culture, recognizable landmarks and long-standing encouragement of unconventional ideas.

The Blanton Museum of Art at The University of Texas at Austin will present the exhibition from Sept. 27, 2026, through Jan. 17, 2027. Blanton members will receive an early look during a special preview period from Sept. 23 through Sept. 26.

The exhibition is the first mid-career survey devoted to twin brothers Nikolai and Simon Haas, internationally recognized artists who were born in Los Angeles but spent much of their childhood and adolescence in Texas. The brothers lived in Austin and elsewhere in the state from ages 3 to 19, making the Blanton presentation their first major museum exhibition in the city that helped influence their creative outlook.

Featuring more than 80 artworks, Haas Brothers: Uncanny Valley traces 15 years of work that moves freely between contemporary art, craft, design and technology. Visitors will encounter fictional creatures, biomorphic forms, intricate beadwork, cast bronze, ceramics, hand-carved woods, blown glass, paintings and other objects that often feel playful, strange and familiar at the same time.

An Austin Homecoming for the Haas Brothers

Since founding their collaborative studio in Los Angeles in 2010, the Haas Brothers have become known for refusing to stay within traditional artistic categories. Their work combines detailed craftsmanship with humor, experimentation and a willingness to build entire worlds around unexpected materials and forms.

That approach has deep ties to the brothers’ years in Austin during the 1990s, when the city’s music scene, creative community and “Keep Austin Weird” identity offered room for artistic risk-taking.

“We are extremely proud to showcase the playful and innovative body of work developed by homegrown Texas talent over the past two decades,” said Simone Wicha, director of the Blanton Museum of Art. “Nikki and Simon were shaped by the creative spirit of 1990s Austin and the city’s unique physical landmarks and nurturing creative culture that inspired their playful outlook, one that gave them the freedom and confidence to find an exuberant voice where the cross-pollination of ideas thrives.”

For the Austin arts community, the exhibition creates an opportunity to see how the city’s influence traveled with the brothers as their careers expanded across the United States and internationally. It also gives local audiences a closer look at the discipline beneath work that may initially appear whimsical or spontaneous.

More Than 80 Works Create an Otherworldly Ecosystem

Rather than presenting the artworks as isolated pieces, Haas Brothers: Uncanny Valley is organized as an interconnected environment. A series of theatrical vignettes will transform the gallery into a fictional ecosystem where cartoonlike creatures, plants and organic shapes appear to operate according to their own internal rules.

The exhibition draws inspiration from pop culture, early digital rendering and the technological aesthetics of the 1990s and early 2000s. The works blend humor and visual excess with carefully developed systems involving proportion, repetition, mathematics and material research.

“What makes Uncanny Valley so compelling is the way it invites viewers into a fully realized universe governed by its own logic,” said Carter Foster, chief curator and deputy director of collections at the Blanton Museum of Art. “Beneath the humor, exuberance, and visual excess is an astonishing degree of discipline and experimentation, revealing artists deeply committed to pushing materials and ideas into unexpected territory.”

The exhibition’s layout mirrors the idea of an evolving system. Individual works are presented as parts of a larger, continuously changing world in which forms are repeated, adapted and mutated. The result is intended to feel less like a static display of objects and more like a living laboratory of ideas.

Beaded Plants, Glass Strawberries and Mathematical Precision

Among the works featured at the Blanton will be elaborate beaded plant sculptures made with hundreds of thousands of antique Venetian glass beads.

Although the finished pieces may look fanciful, their construction relies on strict patterns and formulas. Simon Haas studies the Bead Book, a glossary of rule-based stitches, to preserve realistic proportions. Fibonacci progressions help determine the formation of flowers, while scaled increases shape leaves and off-center axes create natural-looking curves.

One of the exhibition’s major highlights will be The Strawberry Tree, a monumental sculpture created in 2023. The work combines a cast-bronze tree trunk with detailed beaded foliage and illuminated hand-blown glass strawberries. The sculpture reflects the Haas Brothers’ movement from collectible design into the broader contemporary art world while retaining the material experimentation and visual humor associated with their earlier work.

The exhibition will also include two large paintings from the brothers’ newer acrylic-on-canvas series, Accretions. Inspired by the way natural forms grow through layers of accumulated material, the artists created the paintings by squeezing paint from bottles according to predetermined rules. The surfaces were built gradually, producing a richly textured, three-dimensional appearance.

Along with the completed artworks, the Blanton exhibition will provide a behind-the-scenes look at the Haas Brothers’ studio methods, including their material tests, digital tools and technological innovations.

What Does ‘Uncanny Valley’ Mean?

The phrase “uncanny valley” is most often associated with robotics. It describes the uneasy reaction people may experience when a robot or artificial figure appears almost—but not quite—human.

Simon Haas said the concept became increasingly relevant as the brothers considered the themes running through their career.

“When the robot becomes too human, empathy switches to revulsion. The solution for this is to add cuteness: when a robot is humanoid with an extra dose of cuteness, empathy for the object skyrockets. Looking at our 15-year career from a bird’s-eye view, the ‘uncanny valley’ came into focus as a core theme.”

The idea can be seen throughout the exhibition’s strange but approachable creatures. Some appear humorous and welcoming, while others challenge viewers to reconsider their reactions to unfamiliar bodies, textures and forms.

For families, students, artists and museum visitors, the exhibition offers several possible entry points. It can be viewed as a study of contemporary art, a celebration of craft, an exploration of digital-era visual culture or simply a chance to step inside an imaginative world built by two artists with strong Austin roots.

A National Tour Comes to the Blanton Museum of Art

Haas Brothers: Uncanny Valley began its national tour at Cranbrook Art Museum in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, where it was on view from Nov. 2, 2025, through Feb. 22, 2026. The exhibition then traveled to the Museum of Arts and Design in New York for a presentation running from April 11 through Sept. 13, 2026.

Following its Austin engagement at the Blanton Museum of Art, the exhibition is scheduled to conclude its multi-city run at the Mint Museum in Charlotte, North Carolina, from July 17, 2027, through Jan. 2, 2028.

The Haas Brothers have previously presented solo exhibitions at the Nasher Sculpture Center, Katonah Museum of Art, Bass Museum of Art and the Savannah College of Art and Design Museum of Art. They received the YoungArts Foundation Arison Award in 2019.

Their work is also held in major permanent collections, including those of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum and the Rhode Island School of Design Museum of Art.

What Austin Visitors Should Know

Haas Brothers: Uncanny Valley will be on view at the Blanton Museum of Art from Sept. 27, 2026, through Jan. 17, 2027. Museum members may attend the special preview from Sept. 23 through Sept. 26.

The exhibition gives Austin audiences the chance to experience a nationally touring survey with a distinctly local connection. It also reflects the lasting impact a community can have on young artists—long after they leave home, build careers and begin sharing their work around the world.

For the Blanton, the exhibition adds another major contemporary art presentation to the museum’s calendar. For Austin, it brings the Haas Brothers’ unusual universe back to the place where much of their creative confidence first took shape.

Stay tuned to My Neighborhood News for more updates on Austin museum exhibitions, local arts events and community cultural experiences.

By Tiffany Krenek, My Neighborhood News 

Tiffany Krenek has been on the My Neighborhood News team since August 2021. She is passionate about curating and sharing content that enriches the lives of our readers in a personal, meaningful way. A loving mother and wife, Tiffany and her family live in the West Houston/Cypress region.