I never really wanted to collect, but the idea of a foundation that would help artists build excited me. Believing in art education and - though committed Catholics -religious ecumenism, they saw in St. Thomas, run by the Basilian Fathers, a chance to further the school and their causes. ''Once the children had the disposal of their own fortunes,'' Dominique says, ''John and I never wanted to interfere.'' ''If only my father could see him now,'' his sister Adelaide has remarked proudly. Says Philip Johnson, who met Dominique and John when they were ''still living in a tract house'' in Houston, ''They were unpretentious, yet arrogant enough. ''The things I've collected resemble the sort of works my parents acquired, but maybe less broad in range and less expensive,'' he says, pointing out, on a hall wall, a favorite Braque painting of his father's given him by Dominique. Their collection was motivated by their shared interest in the many ways individuals over different cultures and eras reveal through art their understanding of what it means to be human.[7]. While the two had mutual feelings for art and social problems, Dominique was reticent and understated, John was ebullient, opinionated, action-oriented. Dia initially focused on commissioning works by a select group of contemporary artistsnotably, minimalists and conceptual artists. (Dia, the Greek. Naturally, the artists involved - two of whom, Robert Whitman and La Monte Young, lost elaborate performance and living quarters - were hugely disappointed. Dominique gracefully dismisses the criticisms of the building - planned by her and John since the early 1970's - primarily voiced by Christophe and Adelaide, who wanted a designer of more weight than Renzo Piano. GROWING UP IN HOUSTON, ADELAIDE DE MENIL was embarrassed to bring her friends to the art-filled home of her parents, Dominique and John de Menil. (Philippa's first name was changed to Fariha when she converted to Islam during the wedding ceremony to Heiner) and co-founded Dia with Helen Winkler in the mid to late 1970s. battle of omdurman order of battle. Whitman brought a suit against Dia, which is pending. At the sale, Dominique bought a Barnett Newman and Adelaide picked up her first de Kooning.) Dominique Isaline Zelia Henriette Clarisse Schlumberger. An economist, with a Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, he has taught at Princeton and is founding director of the economics research division of the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences in Paris, where he is a professor and where he spends time teaching each year. I spent hours talking with John about world politics and philosophy. The day and hour were set, with Dominique's agreement. Expansive main-floor displays will be made up of works in the storage areas, with space set aside for the spectacular theme shows that Dominique and the museum's director, Walter Hopps, have been doing together for years. ''Wasn't I there?'' Casey Lesser. Dominique de Menil, the daughter of Conrad Schlumberger and his wife, Louise Delpech, was born in Paris on March 23, 1908. Both pupils received new Sufi names. Thus, the 657,829 shares owned by Georges de Menil and his wife and children, now worth about $20 million, have shrunk in value from the $57 million they were worth at the stock's high. It will house the more than 10,000 objects acquired by the couple. The work these artists made changed, or at least questioned, the nature of art: what it. Married to Susan Silver, a Barnard graduate (their son was born in January), he collects contemporary art, furniture, craft objects of the turn-of-the-century Vienna Secessionist school and rare books on art and architecture. They actually maintained their support here for six or seven years before it began to happen.'' For example, use I could have worked with Dominique.''. "Les divers procds du film parlant". Ingersoll, Richard. 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. With the guidance of the Dominican priest Marie-Alain Couturier, who introduced the de Menils to the work of artists in galleries and museums in New York, they became interested in the intersection of modern art and spirituality. * In the early 1990s Dia became a Seven years later, John joined Schlumberger Ltd. Their backgrounds were very different. Philippa De Menil Bio Details Full name Philippa De Menil Gender Female Age 71 (approx.) 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.''. John shot from the hip. They began to concentrate on the more established Museum of Fine Arts. Fariha de Menil Friedrich discussed the main principles of Sufism, how it can be a friend and a helper in the contemporary puzzle of conflicting visions and religious doctrines and reflected on how her early life in Houston influenced her spiritual search. (Once, for instance, he surprised the dance critic Jill Johnston with a round-trip ticket to England, so she could visit her birthplace.) Also on display in Richmond Hall are four examples of Flavin's "monuments" to V. Tatlin, created between 1964 and 1969.[1][36]. WHERE THE DE MENIL MONEY COMES FROM. At that point, the de Menils began to drift away from the museum. .''. 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. [12] The de Menils filled their home with art and hosted many of the leading artists, scientists, civil rights activists, and intellectuals of the day. While pressing toward the completion of the Houston museum, she finds time to head the Georges Pompidou Art and Culture Foundation in Paris; work on a long-range ethno-historical project, ''The Image of the Black in Western Art''; oversee the editing of the writings of Father Marie-Alain Couturier, the Dominican priest who introduced her and John to modern art; keep up with the activities of such de Menil projects as the Institute for the Arts at Rice University and the Rothko Chapel in Houston, and promote religious ecumenism through worldwide contacts among clergy of various persuasions. De Maria had traveled to Santa Barbara for his mother's 100th birthday in early June; however, he went on to . 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. ''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. In return for her efforts, the Holy Bishopric of Cyprus allowed the works to remain in Houston on a 20-year loan. Then you can see how a Communist lives.'' And several years ago, when they were agitating in Albany for legislation on fishing rights. ''Mother lives at two levels,'' says Georges. (For their honeymoon, he took Dominique on a bus trip through Morocco.) stephen scherr family; nigel jones philadelphia. On the other hand, she can be imperious. They were an extraordinary couple. Byzantine Fresco Chapel, Passionate Voices: Unveiling of Love, The [lecture by Fariha de Menil Friedrich], 2007-03-24, 2007-08-07, Eine multikulturelle Familie macht Kulturpolitik, 1997-10-02, Magnificent milestone: The Menil turns 20, 2007-06-03, Menils Everyday People captures human detail, 2007-04-12. ''She had a passion for art, and in later years she did buy it, but she gave it to her grandchildren - small things, a little Klee, a little Picasso, a little Rouault,'' says Dominique. [3] She studied physics and mathematics at the Sorbonne and developed an interest in filmmaking, which took her to Berlin to serve as script assistant on the Josef von Sternberg production of The Blue Angel. Soon, Rice was a beehive of arts activities. 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. De Menil's largesse had created a kind of refuge from the speculative market in art then taking shape in New York, and a new canon of monumental, spiritually charged epics: a SoHo gallery floor buried, permanently, wi th black ear th; a hollowed-out volcano, transformed into a science-fictional archaeo-astronomical laboratory for perceptual flight; a Promethean bed of nails poking dangerously into the desert sky, awaiting some gargantuan penitent. 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. (A question mark next to a word above means that we couldn't find it, but clicking the word might provide spelling suggestions.) The two youngest children are Francois, 41, and Philippa, 39. Small wonder that in Houston, a city where, as a local gadfly once observed, ''it's easier to be rich than interesting,'' the de Menils are something of a legend. 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. Occasionally the digitization process introduces transcription errors or other problems; we are continuing to work to improve these archived versions. They have also come to the aid of liberal-left politicians and Islamic religious groups, avant-garde music and counterculture films, archeological digs and art education, Long Island fishermen and anti-Vietnam activists. For several artists besides Judd, houses with studio or living arrangements were provided along with annual stipends, and museums were set up for the work of others. He met Philippa through Helen Winkler, an employee of the Menil Foundation. [27], The de Menils also organized exhibitions that promoted human and civil rights, including The De Luxe Show, a 1971 exhibition of contemporary art held in Houston's Fifth Ward, a historically African-American neighborhood. Their fervor spilled over into us. Designed by Renzo Piano, the permanent gallery echoes some of the architectural features of the Menil Collection, such as the use of diffused natural light, while retaining its own, separate identity. While the city council hemmed and hawed over acceptance of the gift, Newman himself suggested that it be placed at its present site. And Donald Judd has gone public with vociferous denunciations of the foundation, which is now but a shadow of itself. So serious, in fact, was the recent plight of Dia that Dominique asked her son Georges, a trustee of Philippa's inheritance, to help. Date of birth 1947 Birth place Houston, USA Philippa De Menil Siblings Philippa De Menil Age 71 (approx.) In an effort to provide a strong art history curriculum in Houston for students and adults, they founded the art department at the University of St. Thomas in 1959, inviting Jermayne MacAgy to teach courses and curate exhibitions held at Jones Hall. Plans to create a museum to house and exhibit John and Dominique de Menil's collection began as early as 1972 when they asked the architect Louis I. Kahn to design a museum campus on Menil Foundation property in the Montrose neighborhood of Houston near the Rothko Chapel. Of the siblings, she has also undertaken the most wildly ambitious involvement with the arts, as patron of the financially troubled Dia Foundation, whose aim is to support venturesome artists' projects of a nature or scale that make it difficult to obtain other backing. And next month, Dominique de Menil, the family matriarch (her husband John, ne Jean, died in 1973), will see the completion in Houston of a new $21 million museum known as the Menil Collection, minus the de, in the interest of simplicity. 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. With Francois and Georges, she is also making a film about her father, who carried on his venturesome art and community activities while functioning as a key executive in the development of Schlumberger Ltd. ''She is painfully shy, but generous and thoughtful,'' a friend says. 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