At 9 a.m., the galleries at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (MFAH) are nearly silent. Light filters in softly. The usual weekday hum of visitors hasn’t started yet. But on a recent morning, a dozen Rice University students gathered before a centuries-old painting of a biblical scene quietly debating what, exactly, it meant. The visit was part of a course titled The Bible in Art, co-taught by Leo Costello and Matthias Henze. The painting was not just an illustration of the subject matter. It was the subject matter. And it was the classroom.
“There’s always something particularly interesting about being in the galleries with a group of students,” said Faith Hillis, senior specialist of university and professional learning at MFAH. “They’re curious. They have questions. They’re trying to sort of grapple with making sense of this object from 800 B.C. The conversations are always particularly interesting and particularly rich.”
With its campus nestled in Houston’s Museum District, Rice has built a model for what a university-art museum partnership can look like. The Department of Art History maintains close connections with major institutions including MFAH, the Menil Collection and the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston (CAMH).
“The relationship between Rice’s art history department and Houston’s museums is central to our mission,” said Costello, chair of the department and associate professor of art history. “Not only do classes come to these museums, but students are able to contribute to the formation of the exhibitions themselves by working as interns. They gain real-world experience while also contributing to ongoing curatorial work and research.”
“I think this is honestly one of the most valuable things about the art history program at Rice,” senior Ella Langridge said. “It gives students the opportunity to get work experience and explore the lay of the land professionally to figure out what they want to do.”
Langridge has completed two major fellowships through Rice. As a Jameson Fellow, she spent a year at Bayou Bend Collection and Gardens, the MFAH’s house museum of American decorative arts, researching embroidery by Black seamstresses and publishing an article on the subject in the magazine Antiques.
“You get to make an impact,” Langridge said. “A lot of our scholarship is really valuable work, and it’s really fun to do, but it doesn’t really leave the classroom.”
She now works under the curatorial team at CAMH. Langridge, who focuses academically on medieval and early modern art, said the fellowships helped expand her field of vision.
“The cool thing about contemporary art is a lot of times the artist can just tell you what they meant, so you’re working with a much firmer base of information,” Langridge said.
That experience aligns with what Joseph Manca, the Nina J. Cullinan Professor of Art History and professor of art history, has seen over the years as the department’s longest-standing museum liaison. Manca, who has overseen the Jameson Fellowship for more than 30 years, calls Houston’s museums an essential component of Rice’s art history training.
“We’re very lucky to have all the museums we do,” Manca said. “Our students can walk down the street and fulfill this original vision of the study of art being something that’s significant.”
Bayou Bend, he explained, offers far more than decorative arts. The building and collection are notable as is its level of public outreach via its education department.
“The fellows often get a glimpse of different kinds of departments and not just one department in that fellowship,” Manca said, adding that he’s watched the Jameson Fellowship shape futures. “I’ve seen student after student go become private curators, public curators, museum directors. It’s one of the best pipelines we have into the field.”
Manca also helped found the department’s doctoral program, which was explicitly designed as a museum-collaboration model. In addition to student fellowships and museum-based teaching, the program includes a track for current museum professionals who want to pursue a doctorate while working. The department waives tuition, and students complete their coursework part time.
For undergraduates, the result is a campus culture in which curatorial experience is not just common; it’s expected.
“It’s definitely stressful but also very inspiring and rewarding,” senior Jessica Shi said.
Shi entered Rice as an architecture major. She added art history as a second major during her junior year after taking a course on Impressionism and another on modern European art. Now as the William A. Camfield Fellow, she works in MFAH’s modern and contemporary art department. Shi’s days often blend scholarship with hands-on museum work. For example, she starts Thursdays in The Bible in Art course, grabs a quick snack after class then heads to MFAH for a four-hour work shift. Her afternoon classes include Trends in Cuban Culture, co-taught by Luis Duno-Gottberg and Fabiola Lopez-Duran, and Masters of the Baroque Era, co-taught by Manca and Julie Timte.
“I really tried to explore as many (topics) as I could,” Shi said. “I’m also taking a graduate-level class at the museum. It’s object-based learning on Latin American and Latinx art.”
Most recently at MFAH, Shi has been preparing materials for an exhibition on painter Tamara de Lempicka.
“It’s my first time spending so much time studying an artist and her artwork,” Shi said. “I got inspired by her. It’s honestly the first time I thought I could keep studying something for many more years.”
An emotional connection to the work is exactly what Hillis said she hopes students take away from their time in the galleries.
“You have these amazing professors who are really able to put together these experiences that I think allow students to be able to lean in,” Hillis said. “I just always appreciate how ready the students are to engage. I don’t think museums are quiet places. I think they should be active places for talking and learning and engaging and laughing.”
Hillis, who oversees internship and fellowship programs at MFAH, said the partnership with Rice has been mutually rewarding.
“We’re very grateful for it, and we’re excited to continue to develop it and continue to foster it,” Hillis said.
The art history department’s leadership sees it as part of Rice’s long-term commitment to integrating visual culture into a liberal arts education.
“What we hope students take from these experiences isn’t just professional training,” Costello said. “It’s a deeper understanding of how art lives in the world — how it moves through history, through culture and through them. That’s what lasts.”
Some of those students like Langridge, who plans to work in museums before applying to doctoral programs, will pursue careers in art history. Others will take their training into architecture, law, medicine or business. But all of them will carry with them that experience of standing quietly in front of a painting at 9 a.m. in a nearly empty Houston museum gallery, seeing the past through fresh eyes and learning how to ask the right questions.