Dominique de Menil, a connoisseur, art collector and creator with her husband, John, of the Menil Foundation in Houston, died yesterday at her home in Houston. She was 89.
Mrs. de Menil and her husband, whose fortune came from oil-well technology, became widely known for commissioning the nondenominational Rothko Chapel near Houston, designed by Philip Johnson and dedicated in 1971. With its somber meditational paintings by Mark Rothko and its adjacent sculpture, "Broken Obelisk" by Barnett Newman, it soon became a place of ecumenical pilgrimage.
As collectors, the de Menils cut a very wide swath. Their first serious purchase was a Cezanne watercolor that Mr. de Menil had bought in New York in 1945 on the advice of the Rev. Marie-Alain Couturier, a French Dominican priest and a friend of theirs. Thereafter, everything that was of true quality interested them, from Etruscan art to Cycladic sculptures, Byzantine bronzes, African tribal art, the Surrealist paintings of Max Ernst and the recent work of Cy Twombly, an American painter long resident in Italy.
Public awareness of the size and quality of what they had bought was heightened when the Menil Collection museum opened in Houston in 1987. Mrs. de Menil had commissioned the Italian architect Renzo Piano to build a museum that would "look small on the outside and be big on the inside."
Its apparent modesty, allied to a seraphic perfection of detail, made it one of the most beautiful museum buildings in the United States. With no admission charge, no membership and no museum shops, it fostered the contemplation of an astonishingly wide range of objects, from antiquity to the Parisian and American avant-garde of recent times.
The full breadth of the de Menil art collection became evident when a massive selection from it, titled "Rhyme and Reason," was shown at the Grand Palais in Paris in 1984.
Mrs. de Menil's attitude to art was not at all that of an esthete who stood apart from or above mundane concerns. One of the de Menils' earlier ventures in Houston was to take a derelict movie house, the De Luxe Theater, in a neighborhood of mostly black residents and to turn it into a center for exhibitions of works by black artists through the ages. She chose and installed those exhibitions herself. Starting in 1960, the de Menils financed a research project that culminated in a monumental publication called "The Image of the Black in Western Art."
From 1973 onward, the Rothko Chapel doubled as a center for colloquiums aimed at fostering mutual understanding on issues affecting justice and freedom throughout the world. The first colloquium drew scholars from Lebanon, Iran, India, Pakistan, Nigeria, Japan, Italy, the United States and Canada.
In 1991 the Rothko Chapel marked its 20th anniversary with a joint award with the Carter-Menil Human Rights Foundation, founded in 1986 with former President Jimmy Carter. Nelson Mandela was the keynote speaker and received the special Rothko Chapel award. The projects were not simply highminded pastimes for Mrs. de Menil. Despite her gentle bearing and soft-spoken ways, those who knew her said she was fervently committed to the causes championed at the Rothko colloquiums.
For more than 50 years, Mrs. de Menil was a discreet but seemingly ubiquitous force for understanding in many areas of life. The house in Houston in which she and her husband lived and raised their five children was open to people of every age, nationality, color and religion.
Dominique de Menil, the daughter of Conrad Schlumberger and his wife, Louise Delpech, was born in Paris on March 23, 1908. She studied mathematics and physics at the Sorbonne in Paris in 1927-28. Though born in a bastion of French Protestantism, she converted to Catholicism to marry John (then Jean) de Menil in 1931.
In 1941 the de Menils left Nazi-occupied France and made their way to the United States, where Mr. de Menil was to represent the family firm of Schlumberger both in North and South America. Some years after they settled in Houston, they asked Philip Johnson to build them a house for them and their five children.
When it was completed in 1948, people told them that there had never been a flat roof in Houston. "You'll never be able to sell it," they said. Mrs. de Menil said that she didn't mind about the market because she wasn't building to sell. "Anyway," she said later, "no sooner was our house built than you saw flat roofs everywhere." The house was also remarkable for the debut of a celebrated American couturier, Charles James, as an interior designer. It was his belief that only corridors and dark corners should have color, and that the living room should be kept quite plain. As an interior, at that or any other time, it was surprising.
After Mr. de Menil (by then called John, since he had become an American citizen) died in 1973, Mrs. de Menil continued their work. She maintained the Menil Foundation's commitment to two major scholarly enterprises -- the catalogue of the complete works of Magritte, by David Sylvester, and of Max Ernst, by Werner Spies.
Her most recent project was the recovery of a series of Byzantine frescoes on the subject of St. Themnianos from a church in the town of Lysi on the island of Cyprus. Permission was given for her to have them on indefinite loan from Cyprus, provided that they were installed in a chapel consecrated to the Greek Orthodox church. They were installed last February in a chapel designed by her son, Francois.
The French Government conferred on Mrs. de Menil the title of Officer of the Order of Arts and Letters in 1984. Two years later, she received the National Medal of Arts from President Ronald Reagan.
In addition to her son Francois, she is survived by another son, Georges; three daughters, Marie-Christophe de Menil, Adelaide de Menil Carpenter and Philippa de Menil Friedrich; 11 grandchildren and 2 great-grandchildren.
A funeral service is to be held on Saturday at 2 P.M. at St. Anne's Church in Houston.
Se also Wikipedia article:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominique_de_Menil
Mrs. de Menil and her husband, whose fortune came from oil-well technology, became widely known for commissioning the nondenominational Rothko Chapel near Houston, designed by Philip Johnson and dedicated in 1971. With its somber meditational paintings by Mark Rothko and its adjacent sculpture, "Broken Obelisk" by Barnett Newman, it soon became a place of ecumenical pilgrimage.
As collectors, the de Menils cut a very wide swath. Their first serious purchase was a Cezanne watercolor that Mr. de Menil had bought in New York in 1945 on the advice of the Rev. Marie-Alain Couturier, a French Dominican priest and a friend of theirs. Thereafter, everything that was of true quality interested them, from Etruscan art to Cycladic sculptures, Byzantine bronzes, African tribal art, the Surrealist paintings of Max Ernst and the recent work of Cy Twombly, an American painter long resident in Italy.
Public awareness of the size and quality of what they had bought was heightened when the Menil Collection museum opened in Houston in 1987. Mrs. de Menil had commissioned the Italian architect Renzo Piano to build a museum that would "look small on the outside and be big on the inside."
Its apparent modesty, allied to a seraphic perfection of detail, made it one of the most beautiful museum buildings in the United States. With no admission charge, no membership and no museum shops, it fostered the contemplation of an astonishingly wide range of objects, from antiquity to the Parisian and American avant-garde of recent times.
The full breadth of the de Menil art collection became evident when a massive selection from it, titled "Rhyme and Reason," was shown at the Grand Palais in Paris in 1984.
Mrs. de Menil's attitude to art was not at all that of an esthete who stood apart from or above mundane concerns. One of the de Menils' earlier ventures in Houston was to take a derelict movie house, the De Luxe Theater, in a neighborhood of mostly black residents and to turn it into a center for exhibitions of works by black artists through the ages. She chose and installed those exhibitions herself. Starting in 1960, the de Menils financed a research project that culminated in a monumental publication called "The Image of the Black in Western Art."
From 1973 onward, the Rothko Chapel doubled as a center for colloquiums aimed at fostering mutual understanding on issues affecting justice and freedom throughout the world. The first colloquium drew scholars from Lebanon, Iran, India, Pakistan, Nigeria, Japan, Italy, the United States and Canada.
In 1991 the Rothko Chapel marked its 20th anniversary with a joint award with the Carter-Menil Human Rights Foundation, founded in 1986 with former President Jimmy Carter. Nelson Mandela was the keynote speaker and received the special Rothko Chapel award. The projects were not simply highminded pastimes for Mrs. de Menil. Despite her gentle bearing and soft-spoken ways, those who knew her said she was fervently committed to the causes championed at the Rothko colloquiums.
For more than 50 years, Mrs. de Menil was a discreet but seemingly ubiquitous force for understanding in many areas of life. The house in Houston in which she and her husband lived and raised their five children was open to people of every age, nationality, color and religion.
Dominique de Menil, the daughter of Conrad Schlumberger and his wife, Louise Delpech, was born in Paris on March 23, 1908. She studied mathematics and physics at the Sorbonne in Paris in 1927-28. Though born in a bastion of French Protestantism, she converted to Catholicism to marry John (then Jean) de Menil in 1931.
In 1941 the de Menils left Nazi-occupied France and made their way to the United States, where Mr. de Menil was to represent the family firm of Schlumberger both in North and South America. Some years after they settled in Houston, they asked Philip Johnson to build them a house for them and their five children.
When it was completed in 1948, people told them that there had never been a flat roof in Houston. "You'll never be able to sell it," they said. Mrs. de Menil said that she didn't mind about the market because she wasn't building to sell. "Anyway," she said later, "no sooner was our house built than you saw flat roofs everywhere." The house was also remarkable for the debut of a celebrated American couturier, Charles James, as an interior designer. It was his belief that only corridors and dark corners should have color, and that the living room should be kept quite plain. As an interior, at that or any other time, it was surprising.
After Mr. de Menil (by then called John, since he had become an American citizen) died in 1973, Mrs. de Menil continued their work. She maintained the Menil Foundation's commitment to two major scholarly enterprises -- the catalogue of the complete works of Magritte, by David Sylvester, and of Max Ernst, by Werner Spies.
Her most recent project was the recovery of a series of Byzantine frescoes on the subject of St. Themnianos from a church in the town of Lysi on the island of Cyprus. Permission was given for her to have them on indefinite loan from Cyprus, provided that they were installed in a chapel consecrated to the Greek Orthodox church. They were installed last February in a chapel designed by her son, Francois.
The French Government conferred on Mrs. de Menil the title of Officer of the Order of Arts and Letters in 1984. Two years later, she received the National Medal of Arts from President Ronald Reagan.
In addition to her son Francois, she is survived by another son, Georges; three daughters, Marie-Christophe de Menil, Adelaide de Menil Carpenter and Philippa de Menil Friedrich; 11 grandchildren and 2 great-grandchildren.
A funeral service is to be held on Saturday at 2 P.M. at St. Anne's Church in Houston.
Se also Wikipedia article:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominique_de_Menil
Dominique de Menil, a connoisseur, art collector and creator with her husband, John, of the Menil Foundation in Houston, died yesterday at her home in Houston. She was 89.
Mrs. de Menil and her husband, whose fortune came from oil-well technology, became widely known for commissioning the nondenominational Rothko Chapel near Houston, designed by Philip Johnson and dedicated in 1971. With its somber meditational paintings by Mark Rothko and its adjacent sculpture, "Broken Obelisk" by Barnett Newman, it soon became a place of ecumenical pilgrimage.
As collectors, the de Menils cut a very wide swath. Their first serious purchase was a Cezanne watercolor that Mr. de Menil had bought in New York in 1945 on the advice of the Rev. Marie-Alain Couturier, a French Dominican priest and a friend of theirs. Thereafter, everything that was of true quality interested them, from Etruscan art to Cycladic sculptures, Byzantine bronzes, African tribal art, the Surrealist paintings of Max Ernst and the recent work of Cy Twombly, an American painter long resident in Italy.
Public awareness of the size and quality of what they had bought was heightened when the Menil Collection museum opened in Houston in 1987. Mrs. de Menil had commissioned the Italian architect Renzo Piano to build a museum that would "look small on the outside and be big on the inside."
Its apparent modesty, allied to a seraphic perfection of detail, made it one of the most beautiful museum buildings in the United States. With no admission charge, no membership and no museum shops, it fostered the contemplation of an astonishingly wide range of objects, from antiquity to the Parisian and American avant-garde of recent times.
The full breadth of the de Menil art collection became evident when a massive selection from it, titled "Rhyme and Reason," was shown at the Grand Palais in Paris in 1984.
Mrs. de Menil's attitude to art was not at all that of an esthete who stood apart from or above mundane concerns. One of the de Menils' earlier ventures in Houston was to take a derelict movie house, the De Luxe Theater, in a neighborhood of mostly black residents and to turn it into a center for exhibitions of works by black artists through the ages. She chose and installed those exhibitions herself. Starting in 1960, the de Menils financed a research project that culminated in a monumental publication called "The Image of the Black in Western Art."
From 1973 onward, the Rothko Chapel doubled as a center for colloquiums aimed at fostering mutual understanding on issues affecting justice and freedom throughout the world. The first colloquium drew scholars from Lebanon, Iran, India, Pakistan, Nigeria, Japan, Italy, the United States and Canada.
In 1991 the Rothko Chapel marked its 20th anniversary with a joint award with the Carter-Menil Human Rights Foundation, founded in 1986 with former President Jimmy Carter. Nelson Mandela was the keynote speaker and received the special Rothko Chapel award. The projects were not simply highminded pastimes for Mrs. de Menil. Despite her gentle bearing and soft-spoken ways, those who knew her said she was fervently committed to the causes championed at the Rothko colloquiums.
For more than 50 years, Mrs. de Menil was a discreet but seemingly ubiquitous force for understanding in many areas of life. The house in Houston in which she and her husband lived and raised their five children was open to people of every age, nationality, color and religion.
Dominique de Menil, the daughter of Conrad Schlumberger and his wife, Louise Delpech, was born in Paris on March 23, 1908. She studied mathematics and physics at the Sorbonne in Paris in 1927-28. Though born in a bastion of French Protestantism, she converted to Catholicism to marry John (then Jean) de Menil in 1931.
In 1941 the de Menils left Nazi-occupied France and made their way to the United States, where Mr. de Menil was to represent the family firm of Schlumberger both in North and South America. Some years after they settled in Houston, they asked Philip Johnson to build them a house for them and their five children.
When it was completed in 1948, people told them that there had never been a flat roof in Houston. "You'll never be able to sell it," they said. Mrs. de Menil said that she didn't mind about the market because she wasn't building to sell. "Anyway," she said later, "no sooner was our house built than you saw flat roofs everywhere." The house was also remarkable for the debut of a celebrated American couturier, Charles James, as an interior designer. It was his belief that only corridors and dark corners should have color, and that the living room should be kept quite plain. As an interior, at that or any other time, it was surprising.
After Mr. de Menil (by then called John, since he had become an American citizen) died in 1973, Mrs. de Menil continued their work. She maintained the Menil Foundation's commitment to two major scholarly enterprises -- the catalogue of the complete works of Magritte, by David Sylvester, and of Max Ernst, by Werner Spies.
Her most recent project was the recovery of a series of Byzantine frescoes on the subject of St. Themnianos from a church in the town of Lysi on the island of Cyprus. Permission was given for her to have them on indefinite loan from Cyprus, provided that they were installed in a chapel consecrated to the Greek Orthodox church. They were installed last February in a chapel designed by her son, Francois.
The French Government conferred on Mrs. de Menil the title of Officer of the Order of Arts and Letters in 1984. Two years later, she received the National Medal of Arts from President Ronald Reagan.
In addition to her son Francois, she is survived by another son, Georges; three daughters, Marie-Christophe de Menil, Adelaide de Menil Carpenter and Philippa de Menil Friedrich; 11 grandchildren and 2 great-grandchildren.
A funeral service is to be held on Saturday at 2 P.M. at St. Anne's Church in Houston.
Se also Wikipedia article:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominique_de_Menil
Mrs. de Menil and her husband, whose fortune came from oil-well technology, became widely known for commissioning the nondenominational Rothko Chapel near Houston, designed by Philip Johnson and dedicated in 1971. With its somber meditational paintings by Mark Rothko and its adjacent sculpture, "Broken Obelisk" by Barnett Newman, it soon became a place of ecumenical pilgrimage.
As collectors, the de Menils cut a very wide swath. Their first serious purchase was a Cezanne watercolor that Mr. de Menil had bought in New York in 1945 on the advice of the Rev. Marie-Alain Couturier, a French Dominican priest and a friend of theirs. Thereafter, everything that was of true quality interested them, from Etruscan art to Cycladic sculptures, Byzantine bronzes, African tribal art, the Surrealist paintings of Max Ernst and the recent work of Cy Twombly, an American painter long resident in Italy.
Public awareness of the size and quality of what they had bought was heightened when the Menil Collection museum opened in Houston in 1987. Mrs. de Menil had commissioned the Italian architect Renzo Piano to build a museum that would "look small on the outside and be big on the inside."
Its apparent modesty, allied to a seraphic perfection of detail, made it one of the most beautiful museum buildings in the United States. With no admission charge, no membership and no museum shops, it fostered the contemplation of an astonishingly wide range of objects, from antiquity to the Parisian and American avant-garde of recent times.
The full breadth of the de Menil art collection became evident when a massive selection from it, titled "Rhyme and Reason," was shown at the Grand Palais in Paris in 1984.
Mrs. de Menil's attitude to art was not at all that of an esthete who stood apart from or above mundane concerns. One of the de Menils' earlier ventures in Houston was to take a derelict movie house, the De Luxe Theater, in a neighborhood of mostly black residents and to turn it into a center for exhibitions of works by black artists through the ages. She chose and installed those exhibitions herself. Starting in 1960, the de Menils financed a research project that culminated in a monumental publication called "The Image of the Black in Western Art."
From 1973 onward, the Rothko Chapel doubled as a center for colloquiums aimed at fostering mutual understanding on issues affecting justice and freedom throughout the world. The first colloquium drew scholars from Lebanon, Iran, India, Pakistan, Nigeria, Japan, Italy, the United States and Canada.
In 1991 the Rothko Chapel marked its 20th anniversary with a joint award with the Carter-Menil Human Rights Foundation, founded in 1986 with former President Jimmy Carter. Nelson Mandela was the keynote speaker and received the special Rothko Chapel award. The projects were not simply highminded pastimes for Mrs. de Menil. Despite her gentle bearing and soft-spoken ways, those who knew her said she was fervently committed to the causes championed at the Rothko colloquiums.
For more than 50 years, Mrs. de Menil was a discreet but seemingly ubiquitous force for understanding in many areas of life. The house in Houston in which she and her husband lived and raised their five children was open to people of every age, nationality, color and religion.
Dominique de Menil, the daughter of Conrad Schlumberger and his wife, Louise Delpech, was born in Paris on March 23, 1908. She studied mathematics and physics at the Sorbonne in Paris in 1927-28. Though born in a bastion of French Protestantism, she converted to Catholicism to marry John (then Jean) de Menil in 1931.
In 1941 the de Menils left Nazi-occupied France and made their way to the United States, where Mr. de Menil was to represent the family firm of Schlumberger both in North and South America. Some years after they settled in Houston, they asked Philip Johnson to build them a house for them and their five children.
When it was completed in 1948, people told them that there had never been a flat roof in Houston. "You'll never be able to sell it," they said. Mrs. de Menil said that she didn't mind about the market because she wasn't building to sell. "Anyway," she said later, "no sooner was our house built than you saw flat roofs everywhere." The house was also remarkable for the debut of a celebrated American couturier, Charles James, as an interior designer. It was his belief that only corridors and dark corners should have color, and that the living room should be kept quite plain. As an interior, at that or any other time, it was surprising.
After Mr. de Menil (by then called John, since he had become an American citizen) died in 1973, Mrs. de Menil continued their work. She maintained the Menil Foundation's commitment to two major scholarly enterprises -- the catalogue of the complete works of Magritte, by David Sylvester, and of Max Ernst, by Werner Spies.
Her most recent project was the recovery of a series of Byzantine frescoes on the subject of St. Themnianos from a church in the town of Lysi on the island of Cyprus. Permission was given for her to have them on indefinite loan from Cyprus, provided that they were installed in a chapel consecrated to the Greek Orthodox church. They were installed last February in a chapel designed by her son, Francois.
The French Government conferred on Mrs. de Menil the title of Officer of the Order of Arts and Letters in 1984. Two years later, she received the National Medal of Arts from President Ronald Reagan.
In addition to her son Francois, she is survived by another son, Georges; three daughters, Marie-Christophe de Menil, Adelaide de Menil Carpenter and Philippa de Menil Friedrich; 11 grandchildren and 2 great-grandchildren.
A funeral service is to be held on Saturday at 2 P.M. at St. Anne's Church in Houston.
Se also Wikipedia article:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominique_de_Menil
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