From the very beginning, exhibitions of works drawn from the Blaffer Collection were augmented by regular presentations of student and faculty work. In late 1974 William Robinson was appointed as the museum’s first full-time director. Under Robinson’s leadership, Blaffer exhibited world-renowned artists such as Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque (1976), Edvard Munch (1976), Willem de Kooning (1977), and Frida Kahlo (1978). In 1976, the separate Sarah Campbell Blaffer Foundation initiated a touring exhibition program. The inaugural exhibition, American Abstract Expressionism, included important works by artists Jackson Pollock, Franz Kline, and Willem de Kooning. The program was one of the first of its kind in the nation to underwrite all major exhibition costs, offering exhibitions to museums and universities throughout Texas free of charge.

In 1979, the success of the traveling program prompted the Blaffer Foundation to reacquire the Blaffer Collection from the University of Houston and to take full charge of its care and circulation. The Collection and Foundation are now housed at The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. Without the burden of caring for a collection of its own, Blaffer’s focus shifted to the staging of temporary exhibitions. With a diverse and wide-ranging exhibition program, encompassing all periods of art history, architecture, and photography, the museum secured its status as Houston’s most prestigious public university museum.

In 1989, the Blaffer Advisory Board and the University’s Board of Regents adopted the mission statement that defined Blaffer’s role as a bridge between the University and the general public. It was during this decade that the museum strengthened its commitment to exhibiting a wide range of art in a variety of media by both emerging and renowned artists from around the world, and established relationships with other organizations within the community with shared interests in the spirit of collaboration.

In 2009, Blaffer’s Young Artist Apprenticeship Program (YAAP) won a Coming Up Taller Award from the President’s Committee on the Arts and the Humanities.

In June 2010, Blaffer changed its name from “Blaffer Gallery, the Art Museum of the University of Houston” to “Blaffer Art Museum at the University of Houston.”

In October 2012, Blaffer Art Museum reopened to great acclaim in a newly renovated, state-of-the-art facility designed by WORK Architecture Company (WORKac) on the University of Houston campus with a 20-year survey of the work of contemporary artist Tony Feher.

Today, the Blaffer is a premier non-collecting institution with a history of engaging international contemporary artists who have placed the museum at the center of a global dialogue on the arts and established the University of Houston and the City of Houston as important cultural incubators and destinations. The Blaffer has organized or co-organized wide-ranging solo and group exhibitions that have traveled to major institutions worldwide, including the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, the Phoenix Art Museum, the Institute of Contemporary Art Boston, the MIT List Visual Arts Center, Kunsthalle Zurich, deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, among many others.