Since 2006, the purpose of the Human Rights Art Exhibit has been to serve as an educational event, as well as providing a creative outlet for artists to address global and regional human rights, social justice and environmental issues.

The inaugural exhibit took place in 2006 in McAllen, Texas as a collaboration between local artists and the Women's Studies Committee's conference at South Texas College. The conference and artwork addressed the topic of women in war. The following year, in 2007, the focus shifted to sex trafficking, then human trafficking in 2008. In 2010, the exhibit coordinator broadened the topic to "human rights" to include more artists whose work examines and advocates for human rights issues more broadly.

From 2006–2015 the juried annual exhibit was based at South Texas College. The exhibition and permanent collection have also traveled to the University of Texas Pan American, Texas Tech University, the International Museum of Art and Science, the University of Ottawa (Canada), the Universidad de Monterrey, and the Progreso Art Gallery (Mexico). The last annual exhibit took place in spring 2015, coinciding with the Human Trafficking/Labor Conference at South Texas College — an essential collaboration for the exhibit's planning across its first ten years.