A search began for a full-time studio instructor as well as a replacement for Bill Kane, who had resigned after being appalled by the primitive working conditions; poverty of resources; damp, hot climate; and the deluges that year that prompted one student to dub the campus William Rice’s marsh. Boots, umbrellas, and raincoats became necessary student paraphernalia.

Applications arrived for both the art history and studio positions. We invited portfolios from 14 artists and narrowed the art history search to Martha Caldwell, who eventually was appointed. During the search, a new wing for Fondren Library was under construction. During spring 1966, a violent storm sent 14 inches of water into our basement offices, inundating and ruining work in the artists’ portfolios—we had little furniture and storage space at the time, and the floor served as a convenient table. Slides and books belonging to Kane, Brown, and Chillman also were water soaked. When the waters subsided, we also discovered that a group of Henry Miller watercolors, given to us just a week before by the architecture department, had been washed bone clean.

Insurance covered the losses, but paying claims spread over an entire year. All the studio applicants had to be informed and asked to state the value of their destroyed work—some, it seemed, hadn’t sold much and thought the event to be a personal bonanza!

When something resembling normalcy appeared, Neil Havens, the director of Rice Players, came in to inform us that the English department was releasing him so that he could join the fine arts faculty.

President Pitzer, taking in our recent soggy state, said we would be moved to the second floor of Allen Center, the business office, as soon as the building was complete. I asked for the space to include a departmental art gallery and for a small budget to purchase works of art to form a teaching collection, and both requests were approved.

The second annual art students’ exhibition was staged at the Rice Memorial Center; it seemed to signal a change in the visual atmosphere of the campus. However, at the end of the spring 1966 semester, the department still was struggling to develop, and I petitioned Oklahoma for a one-year extension of my leave since I couldn’t face leaving so many loose ends at Rice. This, too, was approved.

In fall 1967, we moved to new quarters in Allen Center; the offices were small, but the gallery was a clean, luminous space. The initial exhibition was attended by Houston notables, including Oveta Culp Hobby. Six exhibitions were staged for the first season, including those of the California painter John Tomas, ink drawings by Dorothy Hood (one of which, later stolen, had been given to the department by Meredith Long), photography by Geoff Winningham selected from his master’s exhibition at the School of Design in Chicago, and the third annual student show, which caused some campus ripples. Jim Simmons, head of the Office of Buildings and Grounds, objected fiercely to an overflow of student work being shown in the halls of Allen Center, which forced us to stay within the gallery limits.

The contract for Martha Caldwell was not renewed; we searched for a replacement. Earl Staley, a recent MFA graduate of the University of Arkansas, was appointed to teach printmaking and drawing, the printmaking equipment already having been purchased. The slide collection was begun with Juwil Topazio as curator. In the past, only large lantern slides in black-and-white were used for lectures. Winningham, then teaching at the University of St. Thomas, was employed to photograph the glass slides and reduce them to a 35mm format.

A decision had to be made about my pending return to Oklahoma. President Pitzer was very persuasive in encouraging me to remain permanently at Rice, and after a difficult time of indecision, I agreed to do so. He had assured me that future building plans included a new structure to house art and architecture. Such a plan actually was drawn but was rejected because of the excessive cost of $7 million. An alternative, but temporary, space for art was then included in the planning of Sewall Hall, a gift of Blanche Sewall. At this stage, Pitzer was offered the presidency of Stanford University, which he accepted. Fine arts was thus abandoned to its fate by a powerful friend.

Although I found Rice University a sterile, even bleak environment, Houston itself showed stirrings of a vigorous cultural life: the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, under James Johnson Sweeney staged superb exhibitions in the grand space of Cullinan Hall; the University of St. Thomas history of art program and its extraordinary fine exhibitions, directed by Dominique de Menil with the support of her husband, John, gave a unique and blazing life to the intellectual and cultural milieu. Rice could only dream of achieving a parallel art order. There also was the courageous Contemporary Arts Museum, housed in a small building on the Prudential Insurance grounds. Sebastian “Lefty” Adler arrived in 1966 to direct it in a series of spirited exhibitions. The Houston Symphony, the Houston Grand Opera, and the Alley Theatre were well established and supported. Commercial galleries such as Kiko and Louisiana & Bute were appearing. There was a very heady feeling in Houston that almost anything of worth in the arts could be accomplished, and with enthusiasm.

A few gifts to the department appeared, the first from the estate of the portrait painter Tamera de Kuffner—mostly decorative objects such as furniture, silverware, and crystal—that went to enhance the interior of Cohen House.

In 1967–68, the departmental gallery began its second season. Sometime that year, there were rumors that the de Menils were dissatisfied with certain aspects of their role at the University of St. Thomas. Shortly thereafter, Dean Tapazio came to me with the startling news that the de Menils had proposed that the entire spectrum of art activity at St. Thomas be shifted to Rice, a wedding without precedent. The shift would include a group of four art historians, the art library, the slide collection and curator, the exhibition program with its technical staff, and the photography and film program (designated not very happily “media”) with two instructors, plus generous funds to fuel the various activities. We were enthusiastic, but some Rice administrators observed that the de Menils “had a poor track record” in educational support and that the proposed merger was “unprecedented,” as indeed it was.

Thus began months of negotiation, sometimes on campus, but frequently at the de Menil residence on San Felipe, at dinner parties, at the Faculty Club, and at the then Criterion Club. There were many sticking points: there was no room at Rice for such a large group of people with attendant equipment, and Sewall Hall, with one portion planned to house a small art department and a departmental gallery, would be inadequate. Many of the de Menil proposals were extraordinary: at one point John de Menil asked me to go to the president and ask him to stop the Sewall Hall construction, a structure which at that time was rising above ground! The request was, of course, refused by me, but John nonetheless offered to erect another building, a true art center, to be designed by a distinguished architect. For the immediate solution, however, he wanted to build a temporary structure, brick faced, to be situated near Fondren Library. The Board of Trustees rejected this because the architectural style was in conflict with the Rice tradition. The longer-term plan was then followed, and a de Menil invitation to Louis Kahn, brought back a second time by Rice, produced a few preliminary sketches by him. A short time later, Kahn, dead of a heart attack in New York, brought a great dream to an end.

To help solve the space problem, we decided to close the gallery temporarily in order to create office space for the St. Thomas group, and the de Menils finally decided to build two temporary structures, of neutral design, at a point distant from the main campus. One, in time referred to as The Barn, housed exhibitions, work space, and some studio space. Next door, but not quite a clone, was the Media Center. Dominique de Menil, who had been art chair at St. Thomas, became, at Rice, the director of the Institute for the Arts, created especially for her.

A frenzy of activity ensued. Moved to the Rice campus were art historians William Camfield, Mino Badner, Philip Oliver-Smith, and Walter Widrig. Juwil Topazio graciously resigned her slide curator post, which was then given to Pat Toomey. John de Menil wanted Gerald O’Grady and Geoff Winningham to teach in the media program, but strong objections by the Rice English faculty blocked the appointment of O’Grady, a Chaucerian scholar who had been given three teaching awards at Rice but had been denied tenure for reasons unclear. O’Grady did not go down to defeat quietly. After one of several conferences with Dean Topazio, he was described as being “a windmill of words.” I had enrolled in a film course at St. Thomas with O’Grady and thought him an unusually fine instructor, the flow of language put to good use.

As on other campuses, 1969 was a year of upheaval at Rice. A new president to replace Pitzer, William H. Masterson—a former Rice faculty member—faced a protest to the appointment by a united student and faculty group. Masterson sensibly decided to forfeit the appointment. National protests against the war in Vietnam took place here in a brief occupation by students of Allen Center.

Earl Staley’s appointment at the termination of his three-year contract was not renewed. Earl had been hired as a printmaker, but he wanted to teach painting instead. Since he was a young artist without many credentials, the department decided to look for a replacement. Before his departure, I asked Earl to have a solo show on campus—this was before the gallery opened. The exhibition was staged in the Hamman Hall lobby; the work was vigorous and somewhat erotic and accompanied the Rice Players presentation of Edward Albee’s Tiny Alice. A poster commemorated both events.

The Institute for the Arts held its first exhibition, a marvelous one titled, “The Machine,” co-sponsored by the Museum of Modern Art. Shortly thereafter, the Media Center (actually part of the Department of Fine Arts) began giving courses in film with James Blue as instructor. In order to inaugurate the center, John de Menil had proposed that a new film by Andy Warhol be previewed by the faculty, students, administrators, and staff in the Grand Hall of the Rice Memorial Center. This was done. The film was Lonesome Cowboys, which in the atmosphere of 1969 might have been considered titillating. Warhol and attendant “family” members—Ultra Violet and others—paraded in front of the audience before the film began.

The following day, several members of the administration called on me in my office. The usual reaction to the film event ranged from dislike to distaste. These opinions also applied to the notion of any art activity at all on campus, expressed in such questions as, “Mr. O’Neil, just what do you have in mind for the future of the fine arts department?” My answer to that was, “A vital and vigorous creative and scholarly discipline, open to the examination of all ideas in the visual arts and the study and interpretation of the history of art.” The then-dean of the graduate area, however, rather stubbornly insisted, “Art doesn’t belong at Rice because student accomplishment cannot be accurately graded.”

Meanwhile, plans for Sewall Hall had to be revised in order to make room for the increased number of faculty and staff. Space needed to be found for the arriving Art Library and the de Menil teaching collection. Even though a small but pleasant departmental gallery was provided, together with an adjacent loading dock, storage areas, and both a freight elevator and a passenger elevator, none of the dozens of people who pored over the blueprints ever realized that there was no connection above ground between the two wings of the building, nor was this critical fact mentioned by the architects. Thus the fine arts area, with the exception of sculpture and gallery, emerged elevatorless.

Dominique de Menil, Dan Tapazio, and myself were appointed as a trio to make decisions about how that future for the arts at Rice could be realized. At my request, Dominique and I met in order to prepare a budget proposal for the coming year to be submitted to Tapazio. Dominique seemed genuinely surprised when I asked her to put together a budget for the Institute for the Arts major exhibition program. She replied, “We always just pay for whatever expenses there are.”

I realized then that the future, at least for several years, was going to be a wild ride.

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