McNair Hall is home to an impressive collection of public art. With 19 installations that have been an intentional element of the building renovations since 2018, Rice is proud of the diverse permanent collection, which represents artists of a number of different ages, countries, genders and backgrounds.

The new art helps communicate our philosophy that a good piece of art forces you to think, engage and have an opinion. So today, we sit down with Alison Weaver and Dean Peter Rodriguez to discuss this exciting and important collection.

Alison Weaver was named founding executive director of Rice University’s Moody Center for the Arts in July 2015. Prior to her appointment, she was the director of affiliates for the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York. At the Guggenheim, Weaver led its programs and operations in Berlin, Bilbao, Venice, and Las Vegas, while managing its departments of exhibition management, registration, art services, and library/archives in New York.

Peter Rodriguez has been the dean of Rice Business since 2016. Since then, he has doubled MBA enrollment, grown the tenure-track faculty by more than 35%, introduced the first online graduate degree at Rice, launched the undergraduate business major, renovated McNair Hall and helped the Rice Business community survive Hurricane Harvey and grow stronger during COVID.

Alison and Peter discuss how the initiative started, the overarching theme for the collection, dive into the significance of the pieces you see in the halls and outside the building, and the symbiotic relationship between business and art.

Owl Have You Know is a production of Rice Business and is produced by University FM.

Episode Quotes:

We are living in a world without boundaries

17:38 [Alison Weaver] This idea, that instead of thinking about things as siloed and maybe individually—let's say, fields of expertise staying in their lane—I think the real question is: What can we learn from each other, and what exciting sparks are generated when those fields collide? So when you think about artists and the creative problem-solving that they do, and many are research-driven in their practice, they are looking deeply into questions that concern them. And those could be questions of the environment. They could be questions of, in the case of the artist Beverly Pepper, she's interested in big pharma. How is the pharmaceutical industry affecting our culture and our public health? These are questions that aren't just purely aesthetics. And I think that what I hope putting art into spaces can do is really open up those fields of inquiry for unexpected exploration.

Art is beyond museums

23:43 [Alison Weaver] The artwork that meets people where they are—where they're studying, living, and working—is quite different. We do exhibitions at the Moody, and of course, I love it when people come to see them, but they come and go, so you have a snapshot in time, but not that durational relationship, and that's special.

On creating a platform for the intersection of art and ideas

06:55 [Peter Rodriguez] If you think about where organizations create value, it's through the creative process. You have to find solutions to complex problems to create value in the world. And that's less about being cloistered away and, you know, sharpening your pencil and green eyeshade on doing work than it is about trying to work together. And opening your mind to things that haven't been done before and ways of proceeding. And so that's what we want our students to think about: how do they open their minds and use their very best of all that they know to make change happen and to make progress in the directions we want? So whether it's medicine, the energy transition, or tech, creativity is at the heart of everything businesses need to do. And we needed a way to live that a bit more than we were living it at the time.

On making art accessible

30:55 [Alison Weaver] One of the interesting things about public art is that there is no barrier if it's in your everyday world. And so, the work behind us is here all the time. Whether people are taking classes or studying in the building, they will pass by it. They might spend time looking at it and might not. I think the best way to—I wouldn't say explain, but to make accessible—any art, but certainly contemporary art, is to make it familiar and accessible, like public art. So we start there by just putting it where people already are.

Show Links:

• Rice Business Public Art Collection
• Mission | Moody Center for The Arts
• Rice Public Art | Moody Center for The Arts
• Transcript

Guest Profile:

• Alison Weaver
• Peter Rodriguez | Rice Business