The web page for this attraction pretty much contains all the necessary information. Should you find my comments harsh I think you might come to agree with me after looking at the photographs.
The more I see of Mark Rothko’s work the less enamored of it I become. Scroll down to my comments on John Golding’s Mellon lectures for my more complete commentary. However, being at the Menil for likely the only time in my life I was under an obligation, to myself, to see this chapel. I have seen the Rothko Chapel at the Phillips Collection in Washington
Here, rather than the dimly lit room with benches of the Phillips I discovered a cement chamber jammed with folding chairs and so garishly lit, as seen even from the courtesy counter prior to entering the “room”, as to suggest that there was some construction underway. There was none. Thus this harsh glare from an unmodulated center skylight is the lighting that is supposed to transport the visitor into the higher levels of meditative experience. Frankly, I found this space about as spiritual as the waiting room of a Sears tire store. Of course if you are so superstitious as to give yourself up to the myth of religious experience I suspect you could as easily give yourself up to buying into the management’s sales pitch.
On six walls Mr. Rothko has had placed his usual overly large canvases, in this case all of them painted black with subtle variations of other dark colors. Prior to the opening Mr. Rothko committed suicide. Not to be unkind but I would not have been surprised to hear that.
As one exits the “chapel” one faces a terrace with Barnet Newman’s Broken Obelisk standing in a stagnant pool afloat with leaves and other scum. There were more metal chairs strewn about and a string of lights dangling from the trees dangerously at about neck height. This was intended as a memorial to Martin Luther King: on a nice day this might be attractive in a modern art sort of way but until the maintenance improves his family has grounds for complaint.
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