The museum's mission is to elevate awareness of the political, economic, and personal dimensions of art.

The museum was founded by Ann Harithas, artist and long-time supporter of the Art Car movement, and James Harithas, former director of the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., the Everson Museum of Art, Syracuse, New York, the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston and late director of the Station Museum, Houston, Texas.

The museum showroom celebrates the spirit of this post-modern age of car-culture, in which artists have remolded stock cars to the specifications of their own idiosyncratic images and visions.

The museum features elaborate art cars, lowriders, and mobile contraptions, as well as organizing a number of temporary exhibitions by local, national, and international artists, some accompanied by catalogs, such as a retrospective of the social/political, pointillist paintings by Houston artist Ron Hoover (1944-2008) held in 2010.

Previously it was located at 140 Heights Blvd, Houston, TX 77007, which began operations in 1998.