This Weekend: The Fight for Women’s Rights Inspired ROCO’s Can’t-Miss ‘Rise Up’ Concert
Oct. 19, 2023
Mei-Ann Chen, flautist Brook Ferguson, oboist Alecia Lawyer, and bassoonist Kristin Wolfe Jensen
THIS FRIDAY, OCT. 20, the River Oaks Chamber Orchestra’s adventurous 19th season continues its theme of “making waves” with “Rise Up” — a program of two brand new chamber music works, both world premiere commissions by ROCO, and each inspired by the ongoing fight across the planet for women’s rights and equality. The concert takes place at the Asia Society Texas Center. Located in Houston's Museum District and designed by Japanese architect Yoshio Taniguchi, the center opened to the public in 2012, and is an especially exciting venue for art exhibitions and the performing arts.
Conductor and ROCO artistic partner Mei-Ann Chen will lead an all-women ensemble of 13 musicians in the premiere of Breaking the Veil by Grammy-winning Season 19 Composer-In-Residence Richard Danielpour and a new scoring of composer and Texas-native Quinn Mason‘s ballet The 19th Amendment. The 19th Amendment will feature members of Houston Contemporary Dance Company performing new choreography by the company’s founding artistic and executive director (and one of the 100 coolest people in Houston) Marlana Doyle.
Danielpour’s Breaking the Veil pays homage to his family’s Persian heritage and is dedicated by his mother Mehri Danielpour Weil, an Iranian sculptor. The piece was inspired by the recent and brave protests in Iran by women demanding equal rights and freedom. Mason’s The 19th Amendment is named after the amendment passed by Congress on June 4, 1919, and ratified on Aug. 18, 1920, which granted women the right to vote. The work depicts both musically and through movement “the struggle of obtaining the right to vote” and “contemplates the effect that the passing of the 19th amendment has had on our current generation.” (Early voting begins Oct. 23, folks.) Keep an ear out for soloists Brooke Ferguson, flute, Kristin Wolfe Jensen, bassoon, and ROCO’s founder and tireless artistic director Alecia Lawyer, oboe.
Following the concert, ROCO and the Iranian Cultural Foundation-Houston will present a panel discussion centered on equal rights for women. The panel includes women from Iran or with ties to the country, along with Richard Danielpour and his mother.
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Mohl and Leo Villareal's 'Houston Light Matrix' installation
FOR RACHEL MOHL, recently named the new Executive Director and Chief Curator of Public Art of the University of Houston System (Public Art UHS), the power of public art is its ability to engage large audiences. “It’s anything that’s exhibited in public spaces and meant to engage people in their everyday life,” says Rohr. “It’s combining art and life on a large scale.” Mohl also believes art can reveal untold histories, explore cultural exchanges, and engender a social awareness. “Public art is a really great stage in which to do that, because it’s so front and center in our communities,” she says.
Born in San Antonio and raised in Dallas, Mohl first encountered the power of art as a little girl hoisted up on her father’s shoulders inside the atrium of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston so as to better see the suspended aluminum sheets, rods, and wires of an Alexander Calder mobile.
Mohl would go on to study Latin American art as an undergrad at Washington University, and felt compelled to begin advocating for art that had been left out of the overarching art historical narrative. In her previous position as the Assistant Curator of Latin American and Latino Art for the MFAH, Mohl curated several large-scale, site-specific exhibitions and installations, and assisted in the installation of and programming for the MFAH’s acclaimed Latin American collection in the new Nancy and Rich Kinder Building.
In contrast to the MFAH, the four universities of the UH system and additional campus in Sugar Land, Pearland and Katy offer Mohl and her team “a museum without walls.” “Our gallery space is the campus,” says Mohl. “I am always looking for ways to install new artwork.”
Established in 1969, Public Art UHS is the oldest and only collecting arts organization within the University of Houston System, the fourth-largest university system in Texas. UH is the first public university in Texas to formally adopt a percent-for-art program, where one percent of all new construction budgets, and half a percent of all renovation budgets go to public art, and over the years, those percentages have accrued and helped UHS to build one of the most significant and long-standing public collections in the country.
While most of the art in the collection was commissioned by the university, the collection includes significant donations, the most recent being 19 works on paper from The Shirley and Donald Rose Collection. Six works from that collection — which includes photography, silkscreens, lithographs, collage, and original drawings — are already slated for a building on one of the campuses and will be available for object-based learning initiatives.
Looking ahead, Mohl is excited about the upcoming Spring 2024 exhibition by Pakistan-born artist Shahzia Sikander, which will include Witness, a large outdoor sculpture, and Reckoning, a video with animation by Patrick O’Rourke and music by Du Yun. In addition to creating a five-year plan of what’s ahead for Public Art UHS, Mohl hopes to bolster the organization’s public programming and bring even more attention to the collection.
“We want our public art collection to dialogue globally,” says Mohl. “It reflects the diverse audiences that are here at the university and in the surrounding communities.”
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