Houston Chronicle

New arts center displays Rice’s forward thinking

University hopes the Moody will inspire collaborat­ion with public

- By Molly Glentzer

Alison Weaver stepped around piles of sheetrock, wearing a glamorous white dress, as constructi­on crews raced to finish Rice University’s new $30 million Moody Center for the Arts.

Weaver, the Moody’s director, ignored the noise of screeching power tools and the sweat dripping under her hard hat as she described a place where neuroscien­tists and composers can ask students to make musical instrument­s, and photograph­ers and earth scientists can team-teach a course about Galveston Bay.

“It is really different for Rice,” Weaver said. “I want it to always feel like a startup.”

Collaborat­ive arts centers have been trending strongly in higher education across the U.S. for more than a decade, and Rice also wants to raise its profile in Houston as the city nears a cultural pivot-point. Located between the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston and the Menil Collection — which are each expanding their own footprints — Rice is now poised to join the growing party.

The Moody will host its first classes in January and open to the public in February.

With no in-house academic department­s, it will be a hub for cross-disciplina­ry teaching

as well as a major new venue for exhibition­s and performanc­es.

Rice President David Leebron said arts and humanities contribute in essential ways to every education and intellectu­al endeavor, including science and technology.

Brown University’s similar Granoff Center, in Providence, R.I., has had “an amazing impact” since it opened in 2009, said its new director Butch Rowan, a composer and videograph­er who has utilized its resources often. While the Granoff Center doesn’t track attendance, it allows students to break out of disciplina­ry boundaries.

“That’s when magic happens,” Rowan said. “It’s galvanized the entire campus.”

Symbolic design

Situated on the campus’ south side, next to the humble metal shed of the Rice Media Center, the Moody building looks like it could be the home of a hip technology company.

Architect Michael Maltzan’s two-story structure combines a substantia­l jumble of intersecti­ng rectangles clad in charcoal-gray brick and a glass-walled first floor. That’s a wild departure from Rice’s many classicall­y-inspired buildings.

Maltzan said the Moody’s contempora­ry spirit reflects its programs. He admires the “very specific and historic context” of the Rice campus, where many buildings are covered in the same, rose-hued St. Joe brick, but said he wanted to make a building “related to its own time.”

A magnesium oxide coating on the Moody’s dark brick alters its color poetically as atmospheri­c conditions change — a nice echo, in solid form, of the changing light within James Turrell’s monumental “Twilight Epiphany” skyspace nearby. The brick appears to be dark blue on clear days, silvery when the sky is overcast, and nearly black at night, setting off the lights visible through all that glass.

That transparen­cy was key, opening a window to the activity inside and “welcoming everyone in,” Weaver said.

Cut-outs in two of the building’s corners hold steel sculptures inspired by Rice’s lush tree canopy that will be iconic features. Weaver also reads the branching designs as starbursts of “radiating ideas.”

The building’s interior, designed around a central “open studio lab,” is a microcosm of the campus’s quadrangle-based clusters of academic buildings. Walking across quads is an essential part of the Rice experience, Maltzan said. “It’s where some of the best collaborat­ion happens.”

The building’s front door faces Stockton Street, so it’s easy for the public to find. Classrooms and labs are concentrat­ed at the back and upstairs, although Weaver also wants the lounges to be active. Even a flight of padded stairs will double as amphitheat­er-style seating for impromptu talks.

Covered arcades merge the Moody’s indoor and outdoor activities. Weaver plans to project films on the west facade and activate the north side’s triangular green lawn with events that could include student design competitio­ns and outdoor sculpture exhibition­s.

“It’s fun to think about, figure it all out,” she said.

Maltzan’s design was nearly done when Weaver was hired last year, but she tweaked some details and squeezed in a small upstairs cafe — “so it’s not an in-and-out building but a place where people will want to hang out.”

Otherwise, her mantra was “flexibilit­y, flexibilit­y, flexibilit­y ... with as little nailed-in as possible.”

Evolving over time

Weaver, an art historian who grew up in Houston, brings a rare combinatio­n of business, academic and museum credential­s to the Moody effort. She has taught at City University of New York and directed affiliate locations for the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum.

She has already scored a significan­t Houston collaborat­ion: Lebanesebo­rn, Palestinia­n video and installati­on star Mona Hatoum has signed on to be the Moody’s first artistin-residence.

During six to eight weeks at Rice next spring, Hatoum will develop an exhibition for the Menil that opens in the fall of 2017, her first major U.S. show in 20 years.

Weaver would like to see influentia­l artists such as Hatoum build relationsh­ips in Houston — “so they don’t just drop in for a lecture or to do an installati­on.”

She also wants to emphasize the “cultural voice” on campus. Weaver could see Hatoum speaking at Rice’s Baker Institute, for example. “With Mona’s work, you can talk about power dynamics, women in the Middle East or the ramificati­ons of geometric minimalism,” she said.

Several professors are already collaborat­ing on courses for the spring semester. Shepherd School of Music composer Anthony Brandt and visiting neuroscien­tist David Eagleman will work together, as will photograph­er Geoff Winningham and earth scientist Adrian Lenardic.

Although university officials have long said the Moody would not affect the world-renowned Rice Gallery across campus, that institutio­n will close in May, and its director, Kim Davenport, will move to the Moody as a curator.

Davenport’s experience is important: For 20 years, she has commission­ed top artists from around the globe to create site-specific installati­ons with students and faculty in a dedicated, 40-by-44-foot room that is the only university museum of its kind.

“The most important thing is to contribute the tradition of site-specific installati­on,” Weaver said.

She said visiting artists can choose where to intervene at the Moody: “Someone might like to do an installati­on outside, or take the stairwell, or need a smaller, controlled space or a bigger, open space.”

She can’t predict how the building will be used 50 or 100 years from now, but she knows it will evolve over time. Forward thinking is the whole point.

 ?? Marie D. De Jesús photos / Houston Chronicle ?? The Moody Center for the Arts, which is designed with bold geometric shapes, opens early next year.
Marie D. De Jesús photos / Houston Chronicle The Moody Center for the Arts, which is designed with bold geometric shapes, opens early next year.
 ??  ?? Alison Weaver, who grew up in Houston, will be the executive director of the new center.
Alison Weaver, who grew up in Houston, will be the executive director of the new center.
 ?? Michael Maltzan Architectu­re Inc. ?? The architect’s rendering of the north facade of the Moody Center for the Arts, the primary student entrance to the building.
Michael Maltzan Architectu­re Inc. The architect’s rendering of the north facade of the Moody Center for the Arts, the primary student entrance to the building.
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