Rothko celebrates 40 years

Houston Chronicle
February 17, 2011

For the Rothko Chapel, 1409 Sul Ross, artist Mark Rothko
conceived an octagonal, starkly simple space which encapsulates a solemn silence.

TEXAS - After having swept floors and hung wall labels at the Menil Collection as a Rice University undergraduate, Susan Barnes had just accepted a full-time job offer from Dominique de Menil when she saw Mark Rothko's 14 paintings being installed at the Rothko Chapel in 1970. "I will never forget being present when the paintings were being lowered on slings into the chapel through the roof," says Barnes, senior associate rector at St. Matthew's Episcopal Church in Austin. At the time the paintings — each larger than 14-by-11 feet - were being lowered on stretchers through the chapel skylight, after being driven from New York to Houston in an oversize truck, Barnes was not religious, and it would be more than 25 years before she, at age 50, would start attending seminary.[link]