Houston’s Newly Renovated and Improved Rothko Chapel Sheds New Light on Art

From ELLE Decor

For anyone familiar with Houston’s Rothko Chapel, where the Architecture Research Office (ARO) has just completed half of a $30 million restoration and campus expansion, the new glass roof will be the most dramatic change. But this latest addition is closer to Mark Rothko’s original intention for the octagonal building—which houses his 14 monumental, moody paintings and was conceived as a holistic work of art—than anything that has stood there in the past five decades.

In 1964, the Abstract Expressionist artist was commissioned by collectors John and Dominique de Menil to design an ecumenical shrine. Rothko spent four years painting his canvases in a subtle range of dark tones under the large skylight of his studio in a carriage house on East 69th Street in New York City. Working closely with architect Philip Johnson, Rothko modeled the chapel’s interior on the dimensions of the studio and insisted on a similar skylight, over Johnson’s objections. The architect wanted a grander bell tower, but the de Menils sided with Rothko, prompting Johnson to resign.

But Rothko had never visited Texas before his death in 1970, and the intense light of Houston, so different from Manhattan, was blinding inside the chapel. “We ended up with one problem rather than another,” says Christopher Rothko, the artist’s son, who led the building committee and fundraising campaign for the project. From day one, since the chapel opened in 1971, the skylight had to be covered, most recently with a black baffle.

Today, the new glass roof, designed by George Sexton with a system of louvers to soften the daylight, effectively opens up the room and creates the feeling of a clearing in a forest, as Rothko had imagined. “You really feel a lot more of the color, the depth and the warmth” in the magic circle of paintings, says David Leslie, the chapel’s executive director.

The chapel has long been a place of pilgrimage, attracting art-loving tourists and people of all faiths from more than 100 countries. The de Menils placed the Broken Obelisk The chapel was erected as a beacon in the reflecting pool of Chapel Square and dedicated the sculpture to Martin Luther King, Jr., at the opening ceremony. The success of the chapel’s dual mission of spirituality and activism, as well as the pressure of so many visitors and social justice events over the past five decades, precipitated the need to renovate the campus.

In addition to the revised skylight, there is a new visitor pavilion across the street and 300 new trees forming a meditative garden in the landscaping outside the chapel.

“We see this project as a strengthening of the contemplative space and an extension of the rest, because a lot of people don’t understand the broader social justice work that they’re doing,” says Stephen Cassell, ARO director and co-founder with Adam Yarinsky, of the chapel’s outreach programs on issues like climate change, mass incarceration, and human rights, which are more relevant than ever right now. The second phase of the master plan includes a new library and archives building, as well as a programming center for the lectures, symposia, and concerts that previously took place in the chapel, allowing it to function more fully as a sacred environment.

Other architectural interventions include the relocation of the visitors’ desk and book sale to the new welcome house, from the chapel vestibule, now simplified and darkened to prepare visitors for the sanctuary experience. This idea of ​​procession really begins outside, where Nelson Byrd Woltz Landscape Architects integrated staggered rows of birch trees with benches to provide shade and privacy before entering and upon exiting.

“This landscape is meant to be a place where you can reflect on what you’ve seen,” says business owner Thomas Woltz, inspired by the chapel’s ethos, “and think about how you might act in your personal life.”

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