Teen Council was founded in 1999 as CAMH’s cohort of young-adult consultants, serving in a professional capacity to advance programming for-and-by teens. Since then, the biennial (its first show being Perspectives 120: Lather, Rinse, Repeat, an exhibition on hair featuring 29 artists curated by the eight members of the inaugural Teen Council) has been Teen Council’s highly anticipated, crowning contribution to this responsibility. It remains a fixture in CAMH’s exhibition season, conceived, promoted, and executed on equal footing, and continues to respond to the evergreen need of elevating and activating teen arts.

TC’s 25th anniversary biennial considers its history of teen programming and the contemporary conditions of Houston teen-hood, generated from a thematic open call posed by the council. For 25 years, the biennial has been teen-led in its conception, promotion, curation, exhibition design, and programming. Teen Council curates local teen artists represented across the city's sprawl in the Nina and Michael Zilkha Gallery, with media ranging from 2D to 3D, spanning drawing to sculpture to video. These works highlight the increasingly fraught social, political, material, and emotional stakes of being a teen in Houston, Texas.

Composed of young arts enthusiasts, Teen Council serves at the Museum’s vehicle for attracting the city’s teen population to CAMH and exposing them to the vibrant field of contemporary art. For council members, the group serves as a highly collaborative creative incubator that opens up opportunities for leadership, visual literacy, and life skill development. During weekly meetings, the council is introduced to the inner workings of museums and to the dynamic Houston arts community. Activities are decided upon by its members and can change from year to year, but past programs developed by the group include art markets, exhibitions, fashion shows, film screenings, listening parties, music festivals, and poetry slams.