Rice Symposium to Celebrate Museum Addition’s Architect

The March 25 opening of the Audrey
Jones Beck Building, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston’s new addition, will be
one of the city’s biggest cultural events in years.

The day before it opens, a Paul Kennon Memorial Symposium at
the Rice School of Architecture will pay tribute to the building’s architect
Rafael Moneo.

The March 24 event in Farish Gallery in Anderson Hall on the
Rice campus, from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., will celebrate Moneo’s contributions as a
teacher, builder and thinker, and will feature well-known international
architects. The public is invited to the free symposium.

The symposium participants from Rice will include Lars
Lerup, dean and Albert K. and Harry K. Smith Professor of Architecture; Carlos
Jimenez, assistant professor of architecture; and Stephen Fox; adjunct lecturer
in architecture.

Jimenez sees the event as “an opportunity to mark this
moment, which is a rather unique event for the city and a chance to reflect on
issues of architecture in the 21st century that not only relate to Moneo but to
architecture’s overall role in the making of the city.”

Also taking part will be professors of architecture: Kenneth
Frampton, Columbia University; Enric Miralles, Barcelona; Stanley Saitowitz,
University of California, Berkeley; Jorge Silvetti, Harvard University; and
Elias Torres, Barcelona. Other speakers include Martha Thorne, associate curator
of architecture, The Art Institute of Chicago, and author of “Rafael Moneo:
Audrey Jones Beck Building, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston;” and Luis
Fernandez-Galiano, editor, Arquitecture Viva and A.V. New York architect P.
Kevin Kennon will make introductory comments.

For more information about the event, please call David
Kaplan at (713) 348-6777 or e-mail at dkaplan@rice.edu.