Alumna’s passion for art and philanthropy betters campus

Alumna’s passion for art and philanthropy betters campus
Inspired by Dominique de Menil, Suzanne Deal Booth gives back

BY JESSICA STARK
Rice News staff

Fresh from a summer spent in Europe touring museums and studying paintings, Suzanne Deal Booth matriculated to Rice University thirsting for all things art — the culture, the history, the lifestyle. An art history major studying closely with the department’s four faculty members, Deal Booth found what she was seeking, but when she met Dominique de Menil, her thirst was quenched and a new hunger emerged.

“She set an example for me of how to get involved with the people around you,” Deal Booth ’77 said. “She set a tone of what I would call ‘high-level philanthropy.'”

	SUZANNE DEAL BOOTH

Deal Booth got the firsthand look into her mentor’s passion by working as a student assistant during the time de Menil was involved at Rice University. Deal Booth had started the work-study program in an engineering lab, feeding chips into mainframe computers. When she heard de Menil was looking for a student, she jumped at the chance. Her job was to go through the late John de Menil’s files and catalog the information from the note cards. The work might have been dull to some, but Deal Booth loved it because of the art it introduced her to and the insight it afforded her into the de Menils’ collecting process.

Now, more than 30 years later, Deal Booth is doing everything possible to introduce and expose Rice students to art — its history, culture and lifestyle. She has made various gifts to the university for the arts, including major gifts to the Centennial Campaign, and has added fuel to the fire of the campuswide arts initiative. The Centennial Campaign rededicates Rice to the pursuit of three fundamental objectives: transforming extraordinary students into extraordinary leaders, facing challenges and generating solutions, and learning and leading locally and globally.

The Turrell installation

A recent gift from Deal Booth has enabled Rice to commission the new James Turrell public art installation that will stand in the green space in front of the Shepherd School of Music. The Rice Art Committee, chaired by Raymond Brochstein ’55 and co-chaired by Deal Booth, will lead the efforts for the development and construction of the project, which will be open-air and could include a water element.

“Besides all of her other contributions of ideas and resources to the School of Humanities, Suzanne has provided key support to commission and create a piece by James Turrell that will inaugurate the new public art program at Rice,” Brochstein said. “Truly, her efforts are immeasurable.”

Deal Booth said the most important aspect of the installation will be its accessibility. It was important for her to be involved in something that could contribute to the entire campus community.

“I’ve worked in a lot of museums and private collections, and I think that in a way, people in the art world have done a disservice to the field because it’s become too elite and insulated,” Deal Booth said. “And so I’ve made a big attempt to bring access to art. Let’s not even call it ‘art.’ Let’s call it ‘interesting spaces.’ My theory is to build it up and make art more about, ‘Wow, this is an incredible experience that’s part of everyday life’ instead of something you have to go out of your way to do.” 

Deal Booth saw a special fit for the Turrell piece on the Rice campus because of its unconventional merging of science and art. The artist himself comes from a scientific background, having studied psychology and mathematics as an undergraduate.

“I think the installation is perfect because of that combination,” Deal Booth said. “Here you have an artist coming from science working with your perception of the world around you. Challenging you. Stimulating you. What could be more Rice than that?”

Deal Booth’s association with Turrell dates back to 1980, when she was a graduate student in art history and art conservation at the Institute of Fine Arts at New York University. During that time, she worked as Turrell’s part-time assistant and helped build one of his first skyscapes at P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center in New York.

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Deal Booth reprised her role the following year, when she served as Turrell’s assistant during his retrospective exhibition at New York’s Whitney Museum of American Art.

“I always needed a part-time job,” Deal Booth said. “It’s good to be needy sometimes because it puts you in a position of having to be creative in how you work.”

So she made her own way, but not without a little help from a connection she made as an undergraduate at Rice. De Menil helped Deal Booth through graduate school by offering her a place to live in New York. The two had remained close since Deal Booth’s days as a student assistant and her later work as the assistant conservator at the Menil Collection at Rice Museum.

Though the Rice Museum has since become the Rice University Art Gallery and the Menil Collection has since moved, Rice’s connection to Houston’s Museum District has remained, thanks in part to other gifts from Deal Booth.

“Suzanne has brought the ideal combination of expertise, philanthropy and long-term thinking to her involvement with the School of Humanities over the last five years,” said Gary Wihl, dean of Humanities. “In Suzanne we have not only a supporter of art at Rice but a friend and adviser who will help us shape new programs of study and new collaborations between Rice and the art world at large.”

Rice and the Museum District

With her support, Rice has established a three-part collaboration with the museums of Houston: a postdoctoral program, in conjunction with the Museum of Fine Arts-Houston (MFAH); a biennial lecture series with the Menil Collection that brings top scholars to Houston to speak about their research; and funds to support small exhibitions at the MFAH, to be developed with a Rice art historian and a curator at the museum. In line with the Centennial Campaign, the collaboration builds on university goals to engage the city of Houston and create a living laboratory to model the ways that universities and cities around the world can leverage the power and capacity of both partners.

Deal Booth’s support has contributed to the School of Humanities’ hiring of up to nine fellows each year from MFAH’s prestigious Glassell School of Art. Those fellows have taught an additional 33 studio classes and brought fresh talent and expertise into the school. 

“When she challenged the school to devise a number of initiatives that would raise the stature of art, in all its aspects, she started a process that is still unfolding, and will unfold for many years to come,” Wihl said.

Also possible with Deal Booth’s support is the second Biennial Menil/Rice Lecture Series, “Museums and the Medical Humanities: The Arts of Transformation.” The series features four lectures — two in the fall and two in the spring — that explore a nexus of themes concerning embodiment, creativity, trauma, diagnosis, medicine, healing, reflection and transformation. The next lecture, “Positive Art and Positive Healing,” will be given by artist Richard Tuttle at 7:30 p.m. March 10 at the Menil Collection. Barbara Maria Stafford, the William B. Ogden Distinguished Service Professor at the University of Chicago, will lecture on “The Slow Conscious Look: Toward a Pedagogy of Effectiveness” at 7 p.m. April 14 in Rice University’s Herring Hall, Room 100. 

Wihl said that Deal Booth’s support for the core fellows, the postdoctoral fellowship and Rice Menil lecture series laid the foundation for collaborations with Houston’s principal art museums, which in turn led to the establishment of the new doctoral program in art history and support of the Brown Foundation.

“The study and practice of art has already been transformed at Rice,” he said. “Now, with the new initiative of a campus art program and a host of interdisciplinary opportunities across the school that involve aesthetics, the full effect of Suzanne’s involvement will be felt.”

Giving back

With her philanthropy, Deal Booth said she’s just trying to put back what she found within the hedges.

“I thought Rice was the culture spot because this is where I started to see things on that deeper level,” Deal Booth said. “I kept being in the world of art and culture, museums and collections. Then I came back to Rice, and Dominique was no longer here. Not seeing her here — not seeing that influence — I thought there was something missing, so I’m trying to bring that back.”

The ethos of giving back to the community that formed you is something Deal Booth shares with her husband, David, an entrepreneurial financial manager. The couple recently made a sizable donation to the University of Chicago, where he went to business school. Their gift was the largest in the university’s history and the largest ever to any business school.

“We both feel that you should pay tribute to the places that really sponsored you and mentored you,” Deal Booth said. “And Rice is as much as you could ask for in an undergraduate experience.” 

She enhanced her undergraduate experience at Rice by going on archeological excavations every summer.

“That’s another thing Rice did for me,” she said. “It provided a unique kind of access to the world at large.”

She loved the experience abroad, traveling to Italy and Israel, but also loved coming back to work with the Rice Museum and de Menil.

Extraordinary art at Rice

Her involvement with Rice won’t be dropping off anytime soon. Actively involved in the Rice Art Committee, Deal Booth hopes that Rice continues to set a very high standard for its art.

“The good news is that although we don’t have a lot of art at Rice, what we do have is very good,” Deal Booth said, pointing to the 1984 granite sculpture “45-90-180” by Michael Heizer in the Engineering Quad. “Rice has a base and foundation for some extraordinary things.”

With her involvement, Rice is poised to achieve those heights.

“Suzanne made all these efforts to start these brand new programs and reached out to other successful arts initiatives and connected Rice to them,” said Molly Hipp Hubbard, director of the Rice Art Program. “Her thoughtful and intelligent support for these key areas has given Rice a more elevated stature in the arts. Suzanne is her own woman, but she did learn from Mrs. de Menil. You can see how it has influenced her, and now she’s returning that influence to Rice.”

Deal Booth said that she does try to follow de Menil’s example, but mostly is just following her passion for art.

“I’m one of those people that I’m so enmeshed in it, I can’t imagine my life without it. It’s what I live and breathe,” she said. “Art is the visual expression of what people were thinking of their time. It’s something that remains.”

That love of art and preservation of culture can be seen in Deal Booth’s current professional associations and undertakings. She is a self-employed art consultant who currently serves on many boards, including the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Geffen Playhouse at UCLA and the American Academy in Rome. She is the director of the Friends of Heritage Preservation, which has accomplished 29 preservation and conservation projects spanning four continents.

For more information on Deal Booth, visit www.sdbooth.com.