Rainey Knudson with Kimberly Davenport

One Thing Well: 22 Years of Installation Art

One Thing Well: 22 Years of Installation Art

  • October 26, 2021 7:00 PM

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Long before it became commonplace, Rice Gallery was one of a handful of spaces in the US devoted to commissioning site-specific installation art. One Thing Well: 22 Years of Installation Art, edited by Rainey Knudson. Texts by Kimberly Davenport, Joshua Fischer, Nonya Grenader, Dave Hickey, et al.

Rainey Knudson, the founder of Glasstire, and Kimberly Davenport, the founding Director of Rice Gallery, present “One Thing Well: The Golden Age of Site-Specific Installation Art at Rice Gallery.” They discuss some of the 72 site-specific installations that occurred at the Rice Gallery between 1995, when Davenport joined the Gallery as director, and 2017, when it closed. These installations, by artists including El Anatsui, Shigeru Ban, Tara Donovan, Nicole Eisenman, Yayoi Kusama, Sol LeWitt, and Judy Pfaff, are chronicled in the handsome new book One Thing Well: 22 Years of Installation Art, which will be available for sale at the Modern Shop, with a book signing from 5:30 to 6:30 pm preceding this Tuesday Evenings program.

Kimberly Davenport is a curator of contemporary art. In 1994, she founded Rice University Art Gallery as a contemporary art space dedicated to site-specific installation and served as its director for more than two decades. She holds degrees from Maryland Institute College of Art and Yale University.

Rainey Knudson is the founder of Glasstire, the oldest online-only art magazine in the country. Knudson is currently editing a book for Glasstire about Texas visual art since 2000 and is writing a performance piece about Glasstire and the development of the Internet. She lives in Houston.


This popular series of lectures and presentations by artists, architects, historians, and critics is free and open to the public. Lectures begin at 7 pm in the Modern’s auditorium. Seating is at 6:30 pm. A livestream broadcast of the lecture will be available here.

A limited number of tickets (limit two per person) will be available for purchase ($5) from 10 am until 4 pm the day of the lecture online. Free admission tickets (limit two per person) are available at the Modern’s information desk beginning at 5 pm on the day of the lecture. 

On Tuesday nights during the lecture series, the galleries are open until 7 pm and Café Modern’s bar is open (no food service available.) Lectures will not be broadcast into the café this season.

Following CDC recommendations, face masks or cloth face coverings are required for entry to the museum for visitors over the age of 2. This includes in the auditorium and in Café Modern when not at your table or consuming food and beverages. 

 

Podcasts of these lectures are available at www.themodern.org/podcasts, two weeks after the presentation date.
Video recordings of the lectures are available on the Modern's YouTube channel.

Promotional support is generously provided by Glasstire.