A very pure job: An informal tour of the Institute for the Arts by T. D. Kelly The Institute is associated with the energetic Mrs. de Menil to the office staff. Naturally you Rice Media Center, one of a handful of places in can't be fussy about who does what according the United States that acts at once as a film to job descriptions." Gertrude Stein once said that good artists museum, a production studio for student and have no contemporaries. Once discovered. faculty works and an important service facility institutionalized, defused and revered, that is used by innovative teachers campuswide. their works even in the present become It has available the resources of the Menil part of the classical tradition, leaving the artist Foundation and the D. and J. de Menil Collection, exactly where he began: outside of his time or whose worldwide reciprocal lending agreements ahead of it (depending on whether he adopts a with museums vastly increase the range of myth of transcendence or one of progress) but in works seen in Institute shows. And the Institute any event somewhere else, inevitably alone. The has made recent gestures in contemporary Institute for the Arts at Rice University, under the Rene Magritte's Le music and literature as well: it sponsored the Therapeute (1967) direction of Dominique de Menil. is unavoidably premier of Morton Feldman's three-dimensional shown as part of part of this classicizing, interpretative process. choral work, The Rothko Chapel," as well as a the exhibit For But it is probably not what Stein had in mind Children,- summer concert by avant-garde percussionist Steve when she envisioned the usual way that a 1971 Reich in January: this March it ventured into cultural institution mediates creative activity. It contemporary poetry and drama with well- is in effect an institution that tries not to act like Thus it arises that a "secretary" becomes an received readings by New York art-world poets one, and unlike the phone company, it largely international private courier for works on loan, a John Ashbery and Kenward Elmslie, and succeeds. writer-researcher, a packer of art and an dramatic readings of two plays with visuals by ''No categorization," Dominique de Menil says installer of exhibitions: an "executive Larry Rivers in Hamman Hall. emphatically, "describes what we do. Let me put administrator" whose background is in editing The net educational effecf of all this activity is it this way: the Moderne Museet in Stockholm is becomes a scholar, a writer, a book designer, not difficult to assess: it is an excitement, an one of the most important museums in Europe: agent, publicist, and a lot more besides. However openness to experience and to life that does its their exhibitions are new, original, they create the organizational chart may look to human- classicizing joyfully and with elan, that shows new tastes. All the work is done by three people engineering experts, the system works: what is people new, unfamiliar worlds. It is the liveliest who resist categorization." lost in efficiency is gained back fivefold in activity inside Rice's sometimes-insulating dedication, esprit de corps, and originality. "It's hedges, and Gertrude Stein would have loved it. Classicizing with 6Ian unconventional," Rosenstein admits. "because The Institute for the Arts is ten people who there are no set job roles and no set structure. Beyond the personnel chart in sort of thing we do? resist categorization: it is an esthetic resource 'Nro. Harris Rosenstein's But who else would do the to that but Houston whose importance is comparable title is Executive Who would do a show about nothing Its a show about the of organizations ten or twenty times its size. Administrator of the visionary architecture (1968) or diary of the humanists (1966)? Every credentials read like a connoisseur's Institute for the Arts, Popes as builders and decade: it has has a certain didactic value, a city's cultural life in the past but that doesn't de- one of our shows grand manner, but it's also a creative act in mounted exhibitions in the scribe his job. teaching purpose, attention, like new ways exhibitions that draw international "Mounting a show terms of what is shown, the subjects, Show" of 1969: the we did the children's show, the mind-boggling "Machine like the 'Gray' show of slicing art. When major Max Ernst retrospective of 1973 (with that is the first of its ["For Children," 1971], that was the first opening): last happened. You just Ernst himself in Houston for the kind anywhere is an time anything like that had of in Houston without fall's "Gray is the Color," an exhibition enormous job for a can't do this sort of exhibition the from the limitations grisaille works from the thirteenth century to staff this small," he an organization that escapes small, job categories." present. And the Institute has mounted said. "If a place like of size and conventional chamber shows like the own background perhaps personal exhibitions, Harris Rosenstein the Guggenheim Rosenstein's present "Homage to Picasso" in the Rice symbolizes the unconventionality of his present decided to do a show like that, they would Museum. It brings artists and scholars of role: he worked in product planning in the probably have a curator go to one of the big international reputation to the campus, among electronics industry for fifteen years before he graduate schools in New York, name an editor or them neon sculptor Dan Flavin and Allan became executive editor of the major journal Art author for the catalog, and have the editor assign Kaprow, who enacted a happening/event called News in 1965: when the publisher sold the a certain number of pieces from the show to "Baggage" with Rice students and faculty. magazine two years ago, he jointed the Institute each of his graduate students. It gives the for the Arts. graduate students a credit, the professor a publication, and the museum handles publicity, Institute and Foundation administrative details, the rest of it. In Houston One of the most important ways that the there is no graduate department of art history, so Institute escapes the parochialism of small size everything—in the case of the 'Gray' show this is through its connection with the Menil meant locating the work in the first place, Foundation, whose Paris office is nearing arranging to borrow it, insure it, in some cases completion of an astonishingly ambitious escort the works personally from the lending documentary project called The Iconography of collection in Paris or California, then not only to the Blacks: An Archaeology of Racism. The write the catalog, but design it, produce it, print researchers, who started looking for material in it and distribute it all at the level of quality we 1960, have searched all of western art from the demand—everything has to be done by ten beginnings to the nineteenth century for Jean Tinguelys Rotozaza, No. 1 (1967). part of the "Machine people, and that includes everyone from representations of black people, and have Show.' held in 1969. February March 1974 1 Culture buffs and savages policy is to exhibit all kinds of quality art, to be Rosenstein emphasized that the goal of all this open to new ideas that the other cultural activity is not mere academic or art-world status institutions in the city resist. "I'll give you seeking, but is intended ultimately to create a another example," he said. "The film show this taste for new art, different art, in Houston. To summer at the Contemporary Arts Museum. No him, this means creating an independent-minded restrictions, they just gave the time to the group of collector-connoisseurs, without the filmmakers—a very pure job. One night there elitism that the term usually connotes. "To think were eight people there for a Michael Snow film,. that there's an elite is simply insane," he said. three hours of a camera rotating on a "Thebest art is available to everyone." And as if mountaintop in Quebec, just moving around, to prove the difficult point, he delighted in looking at the sky, the earth, the horizon. Three recounting an episode from his Art News days, hours. I walked out of that show with different when, attending a gallery opening, he overheard eyes." Rosenstein said passionately. "This is the name of a man whom he recognized as an education, not the kind that's normally offered. important collector. "I stayed behind and There is no credit, there are no hours. You just introduced myself because he was well known in become somebody different. It's a model for art circles, and I guess I more or less assumed singular human activity. That's what we're trying he was•wealthy—it was an understandable to do." assumption if you knew the value of his copy (circa 100 Torso of Aphrodite Anadyomene, a Roman clear that he A more liveable thing 200 B.C.). shown during the collection. As we talked, it became A.D.) from the Greek (circa qualities is shared winter of 1970-71 as a part of "Ten Centuries That Shaped had bought nearly all the works when the artists This faith in art's civilizing the West were unknown—very, very early. It turned out he by everyone I spoke to at the Institute, and it was a postman!" carries over to literal as well as to metaphorical That people have to trust their own feelings schools through the fifteen volunteer docents of a in Rosenstein's the Institute-sponsored Art to Schools program.