Very much the image of upper-class young marrieds, the pair rode horseback in the Bois de Boulogne, and confined their artistic interests to the likes of Christian Berard, a lightweight Parisian contemporary. Photography became an important component of the collection, which includes works by Eve Arnold, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Danny Lyon, Hans Namuth, and Eve Sonneman. Leland, a civil-rights and antiwar activist who was studying to be a pharmacist at Texas Southern University, had dropped out to run the campaign of a black minister, D. Leon Everett, who sought a seat on the then-all-white board. At that point, the de Menils began to drift away from the museum. Carr, Annemarie Weyl, and Laurence J. Morrocco. Spurred in part by the lack of a real arts community in Houston,[13] in the 1950s and 1960s the de Menils promoted modern art through exhibitions held at the Contemporary Arts Association (later the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston), such as Max Ernst's first solo exhibition in the United States, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, to which they gave important gifts of art. They established the university's Media Center in 1967. More than 1,000 mourners, an international assemblage including a local contingent of Black Panthers - to whom John had given money for setting up a free children's breakfast program - turned out in a heavy rainstorm. An ongoing project that seeks to catalogue and study the depiction of individuals of African descent in Western art, it is now under the aegis of Harvard University. THE DE MENIL FAMILY: THE MEDICI OF MODERN ART, https://www.nytimes.com/1986/05/18/magazine/the-de-menil-family-the-medici-of-modern-art.html. Friedrich has exhibited works by Blinky Palermo, Walter De Maria, Donald Judd, La Monte Young, Andy Warhol, Michael Heizer, and Joseph Beuys, among others in his galleries in Germany, but became less interested in short term gallery installations and through Dia began to collect, and support majo The bulk of the vast collection - reportedly worth between $150 milllion and $175 million - will be kept on the second floor in open storage, visible to anyone who wants to see it. German gallery owner Heiner Friedrich, Fariha Friedrich (ne de Menil) and Helen Winkler Fosdick founded Dia. Heiner has helped me step out into life.''. Their Georgian town house of brick and marble, while more for-mally ordered than the digs of the others, serves as a setting for high-caliber contemporary art, and is one of the Upper East Side's more elegant private dwellings. Someone recommended a Surrealist painter named Max Ernst to decorate a wall of their apartment; disliking his proposal, the newlyweds commissioned from him instead a portrait of Dominique. They gave major gifts of art to the school, bought land to expand the campus and hired Philip Johnson to design new buildings. [1] They commissioned Henri Cartier-Bresson to photograph the 1957 American Federation of Arts convention, held in Houston that year, and worked with photographers such as Frederick Baldwin and Wendy Watriss, who went on to establish FotoFest, and Geoff Winningham, who served as head of the photography department at Rice Media Center. The black under-taker who attended him provided a plain, rope-handled pine coffin, which was transported by Volkswagen van to the de Menils' parish church. ''Once the children had the disposal of their own fortunes,'' Dominique says, ''John and I never wanted to interfere.'' And early last year, facing an inquiry by the New York State Attorney General into its management practices - with a debt of more than $6 million, a projected budget of $5 million, but no visible source of income - Dia began to pull in its horns. '', See the article in its original context from. The issue was really the kind of institution St. Thomas was to be - would it maintain its Catholic identity or would it become a secular college? Later, attending classes at night, he got a degree from the University of Paris, adding other degrees in political science and law before taking his compulsory army service in the Rif Mountains of Morocco during some tribal wars - and falling in love for life with Africa. Dominique and John de Menil, circa 1967. [11] Influenced by the teachings of Father Couturier and Father Congar, the de Menils developed a particular humanist ethos in which they understood art as a central part of the human experience. And she was surrounded by accomplished relatives. Anyone can read what you share. "[8] Piano's understated design for the Menil Collection echoed the architecture of the surrounding bungalows, which had been painted gray by the Menil Foundation, and featured a roof of canopy leaves that allowed filtered natural light to fill the galleries. 1584-1586 - Franoise du Chtelet. But Heiner lives in a dream. We - my brothers and sisters and I - each have a different focus. Though John was born to a titled military family, he grew up poor, thanks to the efforts of his father to pay off a relative's debt. After moving to Houston, the de Menils quickly became key figures in the city's developing cultural life as advocates of modern art and architecture. They also set up a media center, an undergraduate film school whose instructors included the film directors Roberto Rossellini, Jean-Luc Godard and Michelangelo Antonioni. The public would never know museum fatigue and would have the rare joy of sitting in front of a painting and contemplating it Works would appear, disappear, and reappear like actors on a stage. [2], De Menil was born Dominique Isaline Zelia Henriette Clarisse Schlumberger, the daughter of Conrad Schlumberger and Louise Schlumberger (ne Delpech), Calvinist Alsatians. [1], She was born in 1947 into a socially committed, eclectic French Catholic family in Houston, Texas. (As one Texan commented, ''The de Menils have done so much good with so little money,'' pointing out that their wealth was ''really peanuts, compared to some fortunes down here.'') Seven years later, John joined Schlumberger Ltd. Their backgrounds were very different. Apr 18, 2018 1:37PM. In 1930 she met the banker Jean de Mnil (who later anglicized his name to John de Menil), and they were married the next year. Though the building is not loved by some of Dominique's children, it is hoped that eventually the varied holdings of all of them will repose there, too. ''What I inherited was my mother's craving. She badly needed a religion.''. Also on display in Richmond Hall are four examples of Flavin's "monuments" to V. Tatlin, created between 1964 and 1969.[1][36]. '', ''I wanted a functional museum and they wanted great architecture,'' comments Dominique. The Fathers opted for Catholic identity, and after much soul-searching on both sides, the de Menils departed, reacquiring much of the art they had given, trading it for land purchased by them for St. Thomas's expansion. It is often cited as one of the most significant privately assembled art collections, alongside the Barnes Foundation and the J. Paul Getty Museum. [29] The Foundation offered the CarterMenil Human Rights Prize, sponsored by the Rothko Chapel, to organizations or individuals for their commitment to human rights. There are some who think they're crazy. The idea was born, Dominique says, out of her ''shock'' at discovering segregation ''when I arrived in the United States, and wondering why, when great artists have seen blacks as beautiful, dignified, noble, they were not considered so here.''. Under a five-year plan negotiated with Rice, the de Menils took with them the art library and many of the staff members they had recruited for St. Thomas. When John de Menil walked into Alexander Iolas Gallery in Paris one day in 1964, Jean Tinguely's moving, noisy sculptures stole part of . The city's negativism toward the piece, however, served as a goad to the active de Menil political conscience, according to Fred Hofheinz, a young white liberal who was elected Mayor of the volatile city in 1973 with heavy de Menil backing. Born 1947 Start a FameChain Trivia Philippa De Menil Family View Philippa De Menil's Family Tree and History, Ancestry and Genealogy A European artist, who is a friend of Adelaide's and Ted's, remembers making an appointment through them to see Dominique on a visit to Houston. While the de Menils' collecting and museum-building activities have been enthusiastically compared to those of the great Medici patrons, perhaps a more apt contemporary analogy is with the Rockefeller clan, which entered the art field in the early part of this century. TimesMachine is an exclusive benefit for home delivery and digital subscribers. While sharing their tastes, the children have also expanded considerably their parents' life style. The foundation cut back drastically on its support of artists, began to sell some of its extensive real estate holdings and, at auction, some of its choice art works. Dia initially focused on commissioning works by a select group of contemporary artistsnotably, minimalists and conceptual artists. De Maria has a long history with Dia, having been one of the first artists in its collectionwhich was begun by Philippa de Menil, Heiner Friedrich, and Helen Winkler in 1974and a pivotal player in the institution's history. Perhaps the closest of the children to her late father, who was an outspoken liberal drawn to minority causes, Adelaide has developed an interest in the lives of the ''bonackers,'' the vanishing tribe of fishermen and their families native to the eastern tip of Long Island. The work these artists made changed, or at least questioned, the nature of art: what it. [32], Dedicated on June 7, 1987, the Menil Collection exhibits objects from John and Dominique de Menil's collection, including selections of African Art, a vast collection of Surrealist pieces, and the work of a number of contemporary American artists such as Jackson Pollock, Barnett Newman, Clyfford Still, Robert Motherwell, Cy Twombly, and Mark Rothko. She grew up, the middle sister of three, watching her physicist father, Conrad Schlumberger, struggle to perfect his invention, an electric measuring device that disclosed the location of oil deposits. 1538-1576 - Anne de Barbay, fille de Guyot de Barbay et d'Anne de Frenelle. Both pupils received new Sufi names. (Such involvements were not confined to Houston, however; among other affiliations, John was a trustee of the Museum of Modern Art and the Museum of Primitive Art in New York.) The founders of the Dia Art Foundation have filed suit to stop the foundation from selling artworks in Dia's collection. Dominique de Menil appears regularly in Forbes magazine's annual listing of the 400 richest people in America, with an estimated worth of ''at least'' $200 million in Schlumberger stock and art alone. It has, among other gifts, attracted two $5 million contributions: one from the Cullen Foundation, set up by the late conservative oilman Hugh Roy Cullen, another from the Brown Foundation, established by the late Brown brothers, Herman and George R., who were partners in the giant engineering-construction firm of Brown & Root. And the approaching actuality still surprises her: ''It's a long way from my early days as a young wife and mother. I never really wanted to collect, but the idea of a foundation that would help artists build excited me. [22], Their most controversial action on behalf of civil rights was their offer of Barnett Newman's Broken Obelisk as a partial gift to the city of Houston in 1969, on the condition that it be dedicated to the recently assassinated Martin Luther King Jr.[23] The city refused the gift, sparking a controversial debate[24] that ended only when the de Menils purchased the sculpture themselves and placed it in front of the newly completed Rothko Chapel. BUT, AS DOMINIQUE likes to point out, she and John didn't start out rich. News Dia Sues Dia: Founders Try to Stop Art Auction. While the two had mutual feelings for art and social problems, Dominique was reticent and understated, John was ebullient, opinionated, action-oriented. Casey Lesser. ''Each of the children,'' says Adelaide now, ''would have preferred his or her own choice of architects, but after all, it is my mother's museum. ''It's absolutely crazy what they did,'' says one New York dealer. The Fathers, too, can now see both sides. I could have worked with Dominique.''. Although family members say that the decline has affected them ''minimally,'' Dominique de Menil notes, ''A lot has been eroded. Dominique de Menil (ne Schlumberger; March 23, 1908 - December 31, 1997) was a French - American art collector, philanthropist, founder of the Menil Collection and an heiress to the Schlumberger Limited oil-equipment fortune. They buttressed a budding art history department, established an Institute for the Arts that sponsored exhibitions, lectures and events, and created an ''Art Barn'' for exhibitions. In 1980, the woman she was had become a Sufi dervish named Fariha al-Jerrahi, and when the house of Dia fell, she moved on. They were compelling.'' While the city council hemmed and hawed over acceptance of the gift, Newman himself suggested that it be placed at its present site. Institute of Religion Accepts Controversial Broken Obelisk.. She has organized a forthcoming book ''Men's Lives'' - with specially commissioned photographs, and a text by Peter Matthiessen -about them. ''She feels a museum is all about interior spaces. One of the world's largest corporations - its stock was worth nearly $10 billion at the end of 1985 - it employs some 73,000 people in more than 100 countries. Fariha Fatima al-Jerrahi (born Philippa de Menil; 13 June 1947) is the spiritual guide and current Sheikha of the Nur Ashki Jerrahi Sufi Order in New York City. Playing savior to old buildings in the area, she and Ted Carpenter have rescued 15 of them and restored most, with the aid of the Houston architect, Howard Barnstone, a longtime family friend. The couple also has a house in Bridgehampton, L.I., and a 60-square-mile holding in Texas, known as Mesquite Ranch, that is being restored, possibly for use as a retreat or conference center. menil? [1] After Jermayne MacAgy's death in 1964, de Menil took over her classes and became the chairperson of the art department at the University of St. Thomas, curating several exhibitions over the next few years. When de Menil learned that a group of 13th-century Byzantine frescoes had been stolen from a chapel in Lysi, Cyprus, and cut up by smugglers, she paid the ransom and funded their restoration. [1] They had five children: Marie-Christophe (who was married to Robert Thurman and was the grandmother of artist Dash Snow), Adelaide (a photographer who is the widow of anthropologist Edmund Snow Carpenter), George de Menil (an economist), Franois (a filmmaker and architect), and Philippa (co-founder of the Dia Art Foundation[5] and the leader of a Sufi order in Lower Manhattan[6]). She says now that she never imagined their acquisitions would someday fill a museum. A painter himself, he had been a prime mover in the commissioning of Leger, Matisse and Rouault to do work for churches in France. ''At Marseilles, Mother wrapped us in our loden coats to conceal our spots, so the authorities wouldn't detain us.'' His accomplished wife, Lois, a political historian with a Ph.D. from Harvard, is writing a book on a prominent 19th-century Schlumberger ancestor, Francois Guizot, Premier of France under Louis Philippe. The chapel, opened in 1971, is an all-faith center, a ''no man's land of God,'' Dominique says. They have four children, and collect modern and contemporary abstract art, including works by David Smith, Morris Louis, Kenneth Noland, Helen Frankenthaler and Jules Olitski. Their fervor spilled over into us. stephen scherr family; nigel jones philadelphia. Dominique emphasizes that it's a very ''personal'' assemblage, ''idiosyncratic,'' with major gaps. Early in 1969, the de Menils transferred their patronage from St. Thomas to Rice University, a secular, science-oriented school then beginning to branch out into the liberal arts. The Menil Collection's discreet, low-key architecture befits its site in Montrose, a modest, socially mixed residential area of Houston. ''', Dominique's craving found expression during the couple's frequent visits to New York in the 40's and 50's, where they met Father Marie-Alain Couturier, a French Dominican priest who spent the war years there. A former film maker, short-time magazine publisher, pilot and hell-raiser who never finished college, Fran,cois - who has his father's baby face - is now a hard-working architectural student at The Cooper Union. She began to collect work by contemporary Americans even before her parents did, and exerted considerable influence on their acquisitions in the field. As a subscriber, you have 10 gift articles to give each month. But I think it will turn out superbly.''. Impressed with Leland, John de Menil took him under his wing and brought the young man into his own social and artistic circles, ''sophisticating a rough diamond,'' as Leland puts it. I wanted a wooden one.''. They were an extraordinary couple. While Georges and two of his cousins sit on the board of directors of the Schlumberger company today, the family now owns only about 25 percent of the stock. Life style wrapped us in our loden coats to conceal our spots, so the authorities would detain. But, as Dominique likes to point out philippa de menil she was born in 1947 into a socially,. Wanted a functional museum and they wanted great architecture, '' with major gaps conceptual artists -! Modern art, https: //www.nytimes.com/1986/05/18/magazine/the-de-menil-family-the-medici-of-modern-art.html point, the philippa de menil of art to the school, bought land to the., '' with major gaps of a foundation that would help artists excited. Our spots, so the authorities would n't detain us. 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