Like the emotional experience I described in my post on Kandinsky, Mark Rothko's work is more than just patches of color on a large canvas. He tried to communicate human experience with his work. To that effect, a lot of museums I've visited have, instead of simply hanging his paintings, created intimate and reflective Rothko viewing environments.
Mark Rothko, Blue and Grey, 1962. In the Toledo Museum of Art, their Rothko hangs in a darkly painted room with a soft light shining only on the painting. You can sit on the ground in the near-darkness and really experience his work introspectively, in a way the artist would have loved (why would you go to Toledo, you ask? History Art students in Ann Arbor will know, it'sgot a surprisingly good collection of early and mid-20th century pieces). In a similar vein, the Phillips Gallery in Washington, DC has four Rothkos hanging in one small room, aptly named the Rothko Room. Designed in 1960 by Duncan Phillips, it's a small room with four Rothko paintings, one for each wall. Share the bench in the center of the room. Spending 10 minutes there, turning to look at each piece, will leave you with a sense of calm that is tough to find in a busy city. Rothko himself apparently helped with the design of the room, and it inspired many similar installations at other museums and galleries. I especially like this room, because its dimensions make the paintings seem intimate, rather than over-dramatizing them. And because of the small size of the room, you can view two or more of the paintings in the same glance. In our digital cutlture that may not sound that exciting (you see three in the photo below, right? Who cares?), but in the flesh, it's a rare thing.
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