How Austin Became the Home, and Namesake, of Ellsworth Kelly’s Final Masterpiece The chapel Kelly believed would never be built now sits on the campus of the University of Texas, a project $23 million and 20 years in the making. by

Nate Freeman

February 23, 2018 5:08 pm From ©Ellsworth Kelly Foundation/Courtesy Blanton Museum of Art, The University of Texas at Austin.

For decades, a model for a chapel sat in the Spencertown, New York, studio of Ellsworth Kelly—a chapel that the artist had reason to believe it would never be made. Kelly had never made a building before, and the plan was so ambitious that its patron would have to be someone possessed by a radical vision, not to mention deep pockets.

By 2015, Kelly was 92, hooked by tubes to an oxygen tank—his tail, as he called it—and rarely able to travel. But in Austin, Texas, the 2,715-square-foot chapel he first conceived in the late 1980s was becoming a reality.

“At the end of his life, people were coming to see him, various bigwigs in the art world, great collectors of modern and contemporary art, but it required a very large financial commitment, and a commitment to work closely with the artist to build the work to his vision,” said curator Carter Foster. “It had to be the right combination of things. And he was older. Time was running out.” Watch Now: How Kendrick Lamar Won the Pulitzer Prize and What It Means

Foster was sitting on a bench upstairs at the Blanton Museum of Art at the University of Texas, one of Austin’s leading cultural institutions, where Foster is deputy director for curatorial affairs. He was close with Kelly until his death, in December 2015, and has the distinction of sporting the artist’s only work in the medium of ink on skin: a tattoo on his forearm of Kelly’s iconic bright-lit squares that was done by the artist himself—it was even given an inventory number.

Outside, art handlers were putting the finishing touches on that impossible vision—the massive Ellsworth Kelly chapel-like structure called Austin, one contiguous work that showcases 14 stations of Kelly’s black and white marble wall works, an 18-foot-tall totem, and three facades of stained glass panels that tint light coming in. It’s an artist chapel on par with that famous one in Houston, the Rothko Chapel—but it trades the doom and gloom of that space at the Menil Collection for a burst of bright optimism that, since it opened February 18, has delighted the eyes, and the iPhone cameras, of droves of visitors.

“Texas is nothing if not ambitious—they really do put their money where their mouth is,” Foster said.

If you leave the main hub of downtown Austin, with the smell of smoked meat wafting from the barbecue pits, and go north past the old pioneer-days storefronts now inhabited by dozens of startups, you’ll see the pink State Capitol building looming ahead. Walk through its marble halls and exit out the back, and there it is—the chapel. It has Kelly’s unmistakable kind of white against a big Texas sky, its roof whipped into Kelly’s ovular white swoops. Inside, Kelly’s precision of shape-forms and exacting colors explode through the windows and onto the walls, bright shadows sprinting across the space in three dimensions. It’s like being inside of a Kelly painting come to life.

The chapel that became Austin began as a commission, in 1987, from Douglas Cramer, the art collector and soap opera producer behind Dynasty and The Love Boat. Cramer had asked Kelly to design wine labels, and a friendship developed.

“They became friends, and Doug had Ellsworth design the wine labels for different vintages,” said Jack Shear, the president of the Ellsworth Kelly Foundation, and Kelly’s partner for over 30 years. “At one point, Doug and Ellsworth mused on vineyards, and chapels in vineyards, and it developed from that. Ellsworth loved the Romanesque. He would bike all over the South of France and look at Romanesque buildings, and the churches.”

Blueprints were drawn up, but the cost, even then, was “prohibitive.” Cramer sold the vineyard, and the project stalled. There was some interest from a Catholic university, but the deal fell apart after the school wanted it to serve as an actual chapel—”It’s his art, it’s not art as religion,” Shear explained. Other institutions made passes, as did private collectors, but nothing stuck. Then, Kelly and Shear, while on the Upper East Side during a rare trip to the city in 2012, ran into the Houston art dealer Hiram Butler, who had been instrumental in getting a James Turrell skyspace installed in a Quaker meeting house in that city’s Heights district. While chatting about designing work in a religious context, Kelly mentioned that he had once, long ago, designed a chapel, but could never get the money to pay for it. Butler thought, why not build it in Texas? Scenes from the opening night party for *Austin*. At left: Jack Shear with the University of Texas cowboys. Right: Simone Wicha and Douglas Cramer.

Scenes from the opening night party for Austin. At left: Jack Shear with the University of Texas cowboys. Right: Simone Wicha and Douglas Cramer. From ©Ellsworth Kelly Foundation/Courtesy Blanton Museum of Art,

“Hiram wanted to bring it to Houston,” Shear said. “With the Rothko Chapel there, and Turrell’s meeting house, he thought it would have been a good addition.”

When negotiations with Rice University went nowhere, Butler turned to his fellow University of Texas alums, and art collectors, Jeanne and Mickey Klein. They, in turn, brought the idea to Simone Wicha, who was just wrapping her first year at the helm of the Blanton. “Jeanne immediately called Simone, tracked her down, and pulled her out of a meeting,” Mickey said during an afternoon chat at the museum. “She became enthralled with it.”

“I was in the process of setting big goals—you know, all the things you do when you become director of a museum,” Wicha said. “I looked at her and I said, ‘First of all, it’s enormous, and I understand that a work of this scale by an artist of this magnitude is once in a lifetime.’ But I wanted to know why it hadn’t happened at other places. Were we the right place? Did it make sense? Can we take it on? And can I raise the money? And can I get it through the university?”

The Kleins and Wicha went to chat up Bill Powers, who was then the powerful long-serving U.T. president. They had a spot in mind: right by the Blanton, at the mouth of campus, where the main thoroughfare bisects the green quads and unfurls grand views of the Texas State Capitol’s pink limestone cupola. It would be a symbol for the university, a symbol for the city of Austin, they pitched. After the Kleins offered to make a surprisingly generous donation of $1 million, Powers countered by matching it. The project was a go.

“He didn’t need any committees, he didn’t need to go through the Board of Regents—he saw the genius of the project immediately,” Klein said.

It was agreed that Kelly would donate the chapel in full to the museum, as a single work. But it still needed a name. He had never been to the burgeoning tech capital, alive with kids in indie bands and foodies nerding out over barbecue, but he decided to call the work Austin.

“I asked him, we need a name for this work, it’s a work in our collection, and that was his decision,” Wicha said. “I think it’s a generous gift.”

In the end, according to Shear, Kelly was bowled over by the fact that his grandest vision was actually going to be realized.

“I don’t think he even thought it would be made,” Shear said. “This was unbelievable to him. He died at 92, so at the end of your life, to have someone come to you, and say, ‘We’re going to build it’—do you think that completes your dreams?”

The budget quickly doubled, and then doubled again, as they realized the immense production that they had agreed to tackle. Wicha and the Kleins rounded up what existed of Austin’s art-patron scene to raise additional funds, and then construction began, with Kelly signing off on every detail, from the exact angles of how the windows would crest in a circle against the chassis, to the sourcing of materials. The limestone was shipped in from Alicante, in Spain, and the glass on the windows was mouth-blown in Italy before being manufactured by the renowned glassmaker Franz Mayer, in Munich. The marble on the stations that would hang on the walls came from Carrara, Italy, where Michelangelo sourced his stone. And the wood for the door is Texas live oak.

“We went through studio visits, endless amounts of samples, endless amounts of weekly phone calls,” Wicha said. “In December of 2015, I called to make the very final details—we wrapped this up, this is the final decision, we’re done with all the approvals.”

Wicha paused for a second.

“I wished him happy holidays, and 10 days later, I saw Jack calling me right over the holidays, and I knew that’s why he was calling me,” she said.

Ellsworth Kelly had died on December 27, at the age of 92.

“I felt so sad about him passing, but I felt so happy that he knew this was happening, and he was able to make every final detail his,” Wicha said. The interior of *Austin*, facing south.

The interior of Austin, facing south. From ©Ellsworth Kelly Foundation/Courtesy Blanton Museum of Art, The University of Texas at Austin.

We were speaking outside of the chapel on a clear, bright Austin Monday in late January, and when Wicha pushed open the heavy wooden door, the interior revealed itself in its full splendor. Austin is a titanic expression of the artist’s spirit, from the marble stations that line the walls and amount to a crowning expressionist achievement—the minimalist answer to Barnett Newman’s life-affirming Stations of the Cross, on view in a minaret atop the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.—to the giant wooden totem where the altar would be, instantly among the best examples of that part of his practice. And up above, the morning sun caused the rays to come in from an east-facing constellation of stained glass windows, and bleed remarkable color onto the pale limestone, creating anew for us a work by Ellsworth Kelly unlike any made before it, his first work in the medium of light.

“When I walked in at 8:30 this morning, the pink and red and orange were over there, and now . . .—whhhoooooosh! They’re way over there,” Wicha said, her hand darting to catch the light, her voice echoing through the nave.

Then the director of the Blanton did something many, many other visitors will do now that the building is finally open. She took out her phone and opened the camera app.

“I have to take a picture,” Wicha said, her phone raised to the colors. “I’ve been working on this project for five years and I can’t stop finding new surprises.”