Rothko in a New Light A $30 million restoration of Houston’s Rothko Chapel features updated acoustics and lighting that showcase as never before the 14 canvases that line its walls. Inside the Rothko Chapel Photo: Elizabeth Felicella By Michael J. Lewis Houston The Rothko Chapel is a windowless brick octagon, 48 feet in diameter, whose sole source of light is a central oculus. It is a somber chamber of shadows and the 14 paintings by Mark Rothko that surround it are themselves shadows, rectangles of black or deep plum. It ought to be as inviting as the bottom of a well. And yet it is unexpectedly uplifting, and it seems to speak not of despair and oblivion but of the human spirit in all its proud, frail dignity.