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Audrey Jones Beck Building, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston

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2000, Rafael Moneo and Kendall/Heaton Associates. 5601 Main Blvd.
  • (Photograph by Gerald Moorhead )
  • (Photograph by Gerald Moorhead )

Spanish architect Rafael Moneo designed the blocky, limestone-faced Beck Building as a freestanding annex to the Caroline Wiess Law Building across Main Boulevard. Museum director Peter C. Marzio commissioned the Beck Building to provide spaces for the museum's permanent collection of European art, for temporary exhibitions, and the museum store and restaurant. The Beck explodes internally in a great volume of intensely white space: the monumental stair and escalator hall lead to the top floor with its enfilade of galleries evoking the apartments of a European palace. The Beck Building is connected to the Law Building by an underground pedestrian tunnel outfitted with a shallow space construction, The Light Inside (2000), by artist James Turrell.

Writing Credits

Author: 
Gerald Moorhead et al.
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Data

What's Nearby

Caroline Wiess Law Building, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston
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Children's Museum of Houston

Citation

Gerald Moorhead et al., "Audrey Jones Beck Building, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston", [Houston, Texas], SAH Archipedia, eds. Gabrielle Esperdy and Karen Kingsley, Charlottesville: UVaP, 2012—, http://sah-archipedia.org/buildings/TX-01-HN39.

Print Source

Cover: Buildings of Texas

Buildings of Texas: Central, South, and Gulf Coast, Gerald Moorhead and contributors. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2013, 342-342.

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