Mark Rothko, curated by Jermayne MacAgy for the Contemporary Art Museum, Houston, 1957.

“MacAgy managed to ignore design systems — or tried to work outside of systems of taste for these shows. Early on, here in Houston, when she did a Rothko show, she went out of her way to have beautiful flowers in the entryway — living flowers, planting beds. It was just a general reminder that you don’t start trying to ask why the flowers are some color — you relax and enjoy their beauty. It was a very interesting reminder that viewers should not be upset with the Rothkos if there’s no image there, no subject. What is the image of a flower? It’s just a color, it’s a flower.”

— Walter Hopps, interview from A Brief History of Curating, JRP | Ringier, 2008