Rediscovering a masterpiece
Newly opened up and cleaned, Cullen Sculpture Garden links Glassell plaza and MFAH with ‘architectural sophistication’
Imagine stepping into your closet and rediscovering a fabulous couture outfit you’d never worn.
That’s how it feels to walk through the 32-yearold Lillie and Hugh Roy Cullen Sculpture Garden now that it has been opened up, cleaned and slightly reinvented as a prime pathway between the new Brown Foundation Plaza at the Glassell School of Art and the front door of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston’s Caroline Wiess Law Building.
For decades, the green idyll designed by the great American sculptor Isamu Noguchi, who died in 1988, was so hidden that even some regular visitors to the campus didn’t know it existed, curator Alison de lima Greene said.
Though the garden has long been open daily and entry is free, it was conceived as a refuge from the commotion of the city at the same time as the original Glassell School of Art building. The only access was through two narrowish portals or through the school.
The garden was in the early stages of construc-
tion when Greene arrived in Houston in 1984. She thought herself “a great expert in painting,” she said, when then-director Peter Marzio told her she’d be looking for sculpture. Noguchi, who spent nearly a decade on the design, envisioned his masterful earthwork as an enclosure with discretely defined spaces for up to 30 sculptures by other artists. (He called it a “sculpture for sculpture.”)
Learning who the great sculptors were and how to protect their work outdoors was a huge on-the-job lesson for Greene as a young curator. The first acquisitions included Henri Matisse’s quartet of “Back” reliefs, EmileAntoine Bourdelle’s pensive, classical “Adam” and Aristide Maillol’s graceful “Flora, Nude,” who is positioned as if she is strolling unabashedly through the grass. Ellsworth Kelly won the first commission for the space, during construction, for his “Houston Triptych.” Commissions for Jim Love, Tony Cragg and Linda Ridgway came later.
Noguchi’s design was a shocker to people who expected a traditional garden like Bell Park, a few blocks north on Montrose, Greene said. “It took them a while to understand the architectural sophistication of the space.”
Noguchi, a Los Angeles native, drew on the strolling gardens of Japan, where his father was born, and the ancient Mughal observatories of Jaipur — making a subtle but intentional multicultural statement, in a minimalist mode that complemented Mies van der Rohe’s “high modernist” architecture for the MFAH across Bissonnet.
In 1986, of course, the trees were still twiggy, emphasizing the expanses of red granite pavers that baked in hot sun.
Today, 28 sculptures and endless streams of visitors rest comfortably in the dappled shade of mature loblolly pines, Montezuma cypress, sycamores, water oaks, crepe myrtle, magnolia and Mexican plum across the 1½-acre space, amid islands of lush and rolling lawn between those open, hardscaped spaces with their built-in benches.
The sculptures date from the late 19th century to the dawn of the 21st, a strong mix of old Modern masterpieces and contemporary works.
“The garden achieved a flexibility on campus that no indoor gallery could have offered,” Greene said. A few sculptures have come and gone over the years, and a few near the east wall will soon be wrapped or temporarily de-installed until construction of the museum’s Kinder Building is complete.
Greene wouldn’t ever characterize it as “tinkering” with sculpture placement. Even works that appear to rest on the ground are secured by deep plinths. Just moving one piece a few feet can require a crane and set off a curator’s game of pinball with cannon balls because every view is carefully considered. “Everything ricochets,” Greene said.
The Glassell’s rooftop terrace offers a nice vista through the treetops. That’s not accidental. Architect Steven Holl positioned the school in a way that would open up the garden and based its sloped east roof on Noguchi’s angles. The garden — which Holl enthusiastically calls one of the world’s best for sculpture — became the “hinge” of his entire plan.
Landscape architect Deborah Nevins, also awed by Noguchi’s vision, echoed aspects of the garden with the plaza’s design, using the same pavers for continuity. “I think that sculpture garden is genius — how Noguchi separated the spaces within, but you never feel constrained or unsafe,” she said. “There’s just an amazing flow.”
Nevins said the garden will become even more porous when the Kinder Building is complete. The east walls will give way to another park space with flowers, additional sculpture and a water feature. (Noguchi knew that side of his garden might one day be integrated with an expanded campus.)
Visitation through the garden has mushroomed since the plaza opened in May. Anish Kapoor’s monumental “Cloud Garden” is a powerful magnet, drawing visitors to the plaza’s edge, where a low wall made from the old Glassell’s recycled glass bricks marks the garden’s beginning. Down a few steps, Joan Miro’s jaunty “Bird” welcomes all into Noguchi’s world.
Would Noguchi have liked the Kapoor? Hard to say. He told former Chronicle art critic Patricia Johnson he had an aversion to monumental sculpture “because it goes outside the realm of art. It goes into architecture.”
But he understood well that no garden remains static. “This is a part of the dialogue,” he told Susan Chadwick, a former Houston Post art critic. “I cannot imagine a landscape or a sculpture that is mute.”
The museum has created a Spotify playlist for visitors walking through the plaza and garden, with songs selected by people involved with the project. Nevins, an avid gardener herself, fittingly chose the Supremes’ “You Can’t Hurry Love” for people standing on the plaza, where the Mexican sycamores and Asian jasmine groundcover she planted are going to take time to mature — just like Noguchi’s trees did decades ago.
Glassell director Joseph Havel picked The Flaming Lips’ “A Spoonful Weighs a Ton” — a witty metaphor for the complexity of building the school as well as for his sculpture near the garden’s center. Havel’s “Exhaling Pearls” was practically still hot from the foundry when it was delivered, purchased before he joined the museum’s staff. Cast from a rope and two paper lanterns — one of which is perched atop the slender, curved rope — it’s a thrilling ode to the precariousness of life.
The playlist pairs Domenico Scarlotti’s Sonata in A Minor with Frank Stella’s dynamic “Decanter,” which hangs on a wall near the plaza. One can almost hear the rhythms in Stella’s rippling, circular work even in silence. It makes me think of wine swirling into a glass as it’s poured.
No one chose a song for examining “The Dance.” But Linda Ridgway’s delicate site-specific piece always demands a look. It tricks my gardening eyes even though I know what it is, clinging to a wall like a dormant grapevine.
Security officer Javandon Vallare recommends listening to Michael Jackson’s “Earth Song” in your ear buds while standing in the garden. He’s usually there at night. “I notice the leaves blowing, sirens, birds chirping, planes flying over,” he explains. “It’s really peaceful. … The vibe is right, a great delight, appeasing sight, with ease at night, you see the light, no need to gripe, with all your might, perceive your life, living.”
Hear, here.