Rice should prioritize student works in public

By Thresher Editorial Board     4/1/25 10:30pm

If you have been going to class lately, you may have noticed the new “Repair Station” sculptural installation near Herzstein and Lovett Hall. 

This new piece has joined the chorus of unconventional campus art – a group fashioned primarily by non-student artists, including the James Turrell Twilight Epiphany Skyspace, “Climate Parliament” and “Seif.” 

Public art does a lot to enhance our campus, but the most widely-accessible installations spotlight only professional artists, while art created by Rice students is often consigned to suboptimal installation sites. Rice has no shortage of talented student artists – why not give them more of a platform?

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Many of the spaces designated for student art on campus are either not centrally located, such as the “Sleepy Cyborg” gallery hidden away in the Sewall Hall basement, or not permanent, like the photographs and paintings hung on the walls of the RMC.

 Rarely is a building’s outer wall covered in paint thrown by a freshman or a residential college quad adorned with a sophomore’s sculpture. Even Fondren Library’s book-stack paintings, works whose homemade aesthetic is redolent of student art projects, were created by outside artists. 

The glass sculpture in Sid Richardson’s quad — a space utilized almost exclusively by students — was, too.

Exhibits such as the “Comics Without Borders” and “Practices of Attention” prove that student contributions can produce engaging art, but even these examples have only been confined to the Moody Center for the Arts. 

These lack the level of accessibility of more centrally-located installations, such as the Moody’s Tent Series.

The Moody Center has done a lot to boost artists’ voices using Rice campus as a platform, and we recommend setting aside funds for commissioning Rice students to populate campus with their work as well. 

Spaces such as the Moody Project Wall are already brilliant examples of students contributing to art. We encourage Rice to create more such opportunities. 

Rice is home to thousands of extremely talented individuals, many of whom dedicate their free time, if not their field of study, to practicing art. 

Providing more opportunities to art students, non-majors and alumni would affirm Rice’s support for students’ creative ventures and the personal stories that shine through them. 

While some student-created art may be less polished than that of a professional, what’s lost in terms of the school’s marketability is certainly made up for by the cultural cultivation that comes with it. 

Rice’s commitment to red-brick facades as well as the recent academic quad renovations have shown us the essential role aesthetics play in demonstrating what kind of school Rice wants to be. 

We want to be a school that prioritizes its students over its donors, one whose campus represents those who call it home. At the end of the day, the campus is for us, the students, and we think its artwork should reflect that designation. 

Editor’s Note: Thresher editorials are collectively written by the members of the Thresher’s editorial board. Current members include Riya Misra, Spring Chenjp, Maria Morkas, Sarah Knowlton, Sammy Baek, Shruti Patankar, Juliana Lightsey, Arman Saxena and Kathleen Ortiz.

Editor’s Note: Managing Editor Juliana Lightsey was recused from this editorial due to corresponding reporting in the Arts & Entertainment section.

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