Houston native returns to lead Menil
While volunteering at the Menil Collection, Rebecca Rabinow discovered, in earnest, the ways artists communicate.
The Houston native, fresh from finishing her degree at Smith College in Massachusetts, spent the summer of 1988 in the museum’s basement, transferring boxes of John and Dominique de Menils’ correspondence into preservative Mylar sleeves.
“I couldn’t help but read it,” she said. “There were letters from Max Ernst, letters about their plans.”
Whenever a letter mentioned a specific piece of art, Rabinow sought out the work in the galleries and spent time with it. That’s when she began to appreciate the sense of time a painting can hold.
Twenty-eight years later, after a successful stint as a leading curator for New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, Rabinow is returning to Houston to lead the Menil.
She will take the helm in mid-July, president Janet Hobby announced Thursday. As the Menil approaches its 30th anniversary in 2017, the institution finds itself at a crossroads.
The Menil Drawing Institute, which Rabinow
believes could change Houston’s artistic culture, will open in 2017. Part of a $40 million project that is reshaping the Montrose campus’ south side, the institute will be the first free-standing facility in the U.S. built for the conservation, study, exhibition and storage of works on paper.
Rabinow also sees an opportunity to preserve the legacy of the cherished institution founded by John and Dominique de Menil, who wanted encounters with the art they collected to be spontaneous and personal, without direction or context.
“It’s a perfect time to talk about the Menil’s history and the vision of its founders,” Rabinow said.
She also sees a dynamic gaining steam across the city’s arts scene, with the $350 million expansion of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston underway and Rice University’s new $30 million Moody Center for the Arts under construction.
“Houston is about to enter an amazing moment for anyone interested in the arts,” Rabinow said.
‘Decisive moment’
She didn’t intend to be this close to the developments.
Rabinow has been approached before by other museums but did not aspire to become a director. She agreed to speak with the Menil’s search committee this spring, she said, because she wanted to share thoughts about a museum whose tightly-curated shows and permanent collections she has always loved.
Then, during their meetings, she felt something akin to what photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson called a “decisive moment:” She embraced the Menil’s emphasis on the primacy of art.
“It’s not about selling,” Rabinow said. “It’s a place where art is an integral part of the viewer experience. That is not the case everywhere.”
Rabinow, 49, is coming off of a stellar 26-year run at the Met, where she has been the curator of modern art and curator-in-charge of the new Leonard A. Lauder Research Center for Modern Art.
For many years she was a colleague of another hometown prodigy, Gary Tinterow, who left the Met to direct the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston in 2012.
The international search to replace the much-admired Josef Helfenstein, who left the Menil in December to direct Switzerland’s Kunstmuseum Basel, drew an unprecedented number of applicants, Hobby said. She praised interim director Tom Rhoads, who is returning to California where he previously worked at Los Angeles’ J. Paul Getty Museum.
Rabinow quickly became the unanimous standout during interviews with seven “incredibly impressive” candidates because she has “the complete package” of curatorial and scholarly heft, vision, leadership skills and integrity, Hobby said.
“The Menil values rigorous intellectual independence and humane values. She represents all that … and she’s engaging and gracious.”
Rabinow, who is married to music management professional Matt Ringel and has two teenage sons, organized many notable exhibitions at the Met, including the recent blockbusters “Cubism: The Leonard A. Lauder Collection” and “Matisse, In Search of True Painting.” Also an active business leader, she served on the museum’s financial oversight and exhibition committees and recently chaired a 230-member forum of curators, conservators and scientists.
Always interested in arts
Though she once considered becoming a doctor, Rabinow’s interest in the arts has always been there, nurtured by the people in her life.
Years of traveling with her parents, Kathryn and Richard Rabinow, a former Exxon group president, instilled her love of museums. A teacher at St. John’s School encouraged her love of art history. During a year abroad at the Sorbonne, she fell in love with artist books by Henri Matisse.
And, of course, there was that formative summer at the Menil. Although she settled in New York in 1990 and earned her advanced degrees there, Rabinow continued to visit the Menil whenever she came home.
“Menil shows are not bloated. They’re really high caliber, and they always leave you inspired,” she said.
Mark Wawro, who led the search committee, said Rabinow’s passion for the Menil’s core values resonated.
“She really understands what the de Menils were about when they thought about how art relates to the community,” he said.
The founders, who were deeply committed to human rights, took culture to people in innovative ways, including a landmark exhibition at the DeLuxe Theater in the Fifth Ward in 1971 — one of the first racially integrated exhibitions of contemporary artists in the country. Dominique de Menil insisted on free admission to the museum, which she considered a gift to the people of Houston.
Along with modern and contemporary art, the heart of the Menil Collection includes a wealth of art from Africa, the Americas, the Pacific Northwest and the Pacific Islands. The Menil grounds are full of spaces where people can interact with art “on the fly” without entering the museum, Wawro noted. “It’s not just a place you can come and contemplate. It affects how you look at life.”
Fundraising a priority
Rabinow has an “electric” vision, he said, and the right experience to produce innovative, interesting programming inside and outside the museum’s walls that will be “good for Houston in general.”
Her energy dovetails with the board’s desire to update the strategic plan it adopted in 2006. “A decade later we are a different place,” Hobby said. “It’s time to reassess.”
Fundraising will also be a priority. The Menil is still nearly $20 million shy of finishing a $110 million capital campaign the board wants completed by the time the Drawing Institute opens.
The Menil has a staff of 124 and an annual operating budget of $22.3 million.
Rabinow, who counts listening among her strengths, said she plans to seek input from the staff and the community. “Our goal is to make sure all of Houston knows the Menil is there for them, for free,” she said.