She spoke at the Byzantine Fresco Chapel, inaugurating the Passionate Voices series, celebrating the 10th anniversary. He later realized who had delivered the manuscript and wrote her a note.'' Beyond the family, their influence has been substantial, too. 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. Today, Dominique says, her relationship with the still-small institution is ''very friendly. Dominique's way of not always paying full attention to this world has been transmitted to some of her offspring. At one of them he met and influenced Philippa de Menil, a member of a famous Franco-American family of art patrons, and her German-born husband. News Dia Sues Dia: Founders Try to Stop Art Auction. Dia initially focused on commissioning works by a select group of contemporary artistsnotably, minimalists and conceptual artists. Dominique, who was courted by other cities, says that the museum is in Houston because ''I was so encouraged here.'' Dominique and John de Menil, circa 1967. Their fervor spilled over into us. 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. And then, you can move in and we can move out.' 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 established the university's Media Center in 1967. 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. 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 de Menil. The two youngest children are Francois, 41, and Philippa, 39. [8] Over the years the family enjoyed close personal friendships with many of the artists whose work they collected, including Victor Brauner, Max Ernst, Jasper Johns, Yves Klein, Ren Magritte, Robert Rauschenberg, Dorothea Tanning, and Andy Warhol. 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. 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. Both pupils received new Sufi names. Casey Lesser. She studied mathematics and physics at the Sorbonne in Paris in 1927-28 . 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. Philippa de Menil (now Fariha Fatima al-Jerrahi) ominously reflected on the passing of her spiritual guide saying, "His death seemed to herald many new changes." [5] The new board began slashing at Dia contracts and real estate to get the budget under control with projects being dropped and dismantled at a fast rate. Flowering, in a way. 1584-1586 - Franoise du Chtelet. As a result, Georges's wife Lois has been appointed to Dia's reconstituted board, and Heiner has resigned. And I loathed the black-tiled floor. They were the first Americans to influence Europeans. ''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. 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. We - my brothers and sisters and I - each have a different focus. (The two recently returned from a trek to western Tibet to take in the ruins of an 11th-century Buddhist temple.) The family was met in Havana by John, who - having joined Schlumberger in 1938 - had been in Rumania, overseeing Schlumberger operations there, as well as putting sand into the gear boxes of Rumanian trains carrying oil to Germany. (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.) Sheikha. key biscayne triathlon 2022 They began to concentrate on the more established Museum of Fine Arts. She said. ''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. 1974 by art dealer Heiner Friedrich and his wife, art patron Philippa de Menil. 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. By the 1960s the de Menils had gravitated toward the major American post-war movements of abstract expressionism, pop art, and minimalism. John and Dominique de Menil also shared an interest in photography, inviting photographers to come to Houston to document events in the city and exhibit their work. philippa de menilare there really purple owls. ''Yet I admire them, and I don't want to belittle their achievements.'' She has organized a forthcoming book ''Men's Lives'' - with specially commissioned photographs, and a text by Peter Matthiessen -about them. He remembers admiring a photograph by Henri Cartier-Bresson at Adelaide's house. Institute of Religion Accepts Controversial Broken Obelisk.. [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. Then you can see how a Communist lives.'' Hopps, a well known presence in the field of contemporary art, comes from California and made a reputation early on as director of the esteemed Pasadena Museum of Art. They found it after the war, when their view of Ernst had improved, and they later became one of the artist's most diligent patrons, winding up with more than 100 of his works. Although family members say that the decline has affected them ''minimally,'' Dominique de Menil notes, ''A lot has been eroded. (Once, for instance, he surprised the dance critic Jill Johnston with a round-trip ticket to England, so she could visit her birthplace.) [26] It was established as an autonomous organization the next year and began hosting colloquia, beginning with "Traditional Modes of Contemplation and Action," which brought together religious leaders, scholars, and musicians from four continents. But we are definitely a collection of people very much influenced by John and Dominique. The de Menils' involvement with blacks has not only been on the political level. (One takes off one's shoes on entering.) 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. ''She feels a museum is all about interior spaces. Fariha Friedrichwhich is the name Philippa de Menil assumed after she and Heiner Friedrich embraced Sufi Islam and married in 1979was talking about the beginning of their foundation. And she was surrounded by accomplished relatives. Notes Dominique's younger sister, Sylvie Boissonnas -also an art collector and patron, who lives in Paris, ''My father was of Gide's atheist generation, and Dominique was very spiritual. [1] Contents 1 Biography 2 See also 3 References 4 External links Biography [ edit] She was born in 1947 into a socially committed, eclectic French Catholic family in Houston, Texas. He took the the couple around to galleries, singing the praises of the modernists. They were compelling.'' 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. Adelaide, two years younger and known as Addie to the family, is a photographer, and travels with Ted Carpenter on a far-flung anthropological and collecting beat. The Menil Collection's discreet, low-key architecture befits its site in Montrose, a modest, socially mixed residential area of Houston. It will house the more than 10,000 objects acquired by the couple. Ironically, planned in a time of boom for Houston, the museum will be finished in a time of bust, due to falling oil prices. The Menil Foundation is contributing not only the art but about $8 million. she asked, in genuine surprise. As it turned out, her parents, thanks to their holdings in Schlumberger, the giant multinational oil-field services company, were en route to developing one of the world's largest private art collections, noted today for its examples of Cubism, Surrealism, African sculpture, Mediterranean antiquities and contemporary works. '', AT 78, DOMINIQUE IS A HANDSOME WOMAN OF frail, unassuming presence, whose ''spiritual'' mien and austere garb evoke the image of a medieval saint. Dominique, who from childhood had an impulse toward collecting, acquiring such objects as ''shells, cut-out images, exotic seeds,'' attributes her interest in art -late-blooming as it was - to her mother, who would have collected, save for her husband's disapproval. Philippa - called ''Phip'' by intimates - the mother of two, is probably the closest heir to her mother's ''spirituality,'' and has her good looks and unpretentious manner. (A question mark next to a word above means that we couldn't find it, but clicking the word might provide spelling suggestions.) The most conservative of the children, and the most involved with family tradition, he uses - in France - his title, Baron, bestowed on the de Menil family by Napoleon. THE DE MENILS' IN-volvement in the Houston art world began in the 1940's - an inevitable consequence of Father Couturier's evangelism. [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. 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. 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. Menil Archives, The Menil Collection, Houston. The big, Orientally carpeted chambers, including a prayer room, are accented by Dan Flavin's sculptures of fluorescent light, among other works, and on one wall hangs a portrait of the Friedrichs' late Sufi guru, Sheik Muzaffer Ozak. WHERE THE DE MENIL MONEY COMES FROM. When John de Menil walked into Alexander Iolas Gallery in Paris one day in 1964, Jean Tinguely's moving, noisy sculptures stole part of . ''I went to breakfast, lunch and dinner at their house and met every important person they knew. At that point, the de Menils began to drift away from the museum. "Les divers procds du film parlant". In 1974, the two formed the Dia Foundation - the name is Greek for catalyst - subsidized solely by Philippa's shares in Schlumberger Ltd. Dia soon became one of the largest and most venturesome nonprofit funding sources in the field of contemporary art, buying up the works of certain artists -more than 125 of John Chamberlain's sculptures of crushed auto parts, for example - and sponsoring projects that range from Walter de Maria's permanent ''earth sculpture,'' comprising 280,000 pounds of dirt that fill a gallery in a SoHo building, to the vast ''Art Museum of the Pecos,'' in Marfa, Tex., a compound of more than 340 acres which has deployed an array of indoor and outdoor works by Donald Judd and other artists. Francois, who stopped making films (''I was dissatisfied with what I was doing and felt a change would be good''), is still elated over his admission to The Cooper Union, achieved in part by hiring special tutors to prepare him in necessary disciplines, such as mathematics. Dr. Martin Luther King was assassinated, they offered it to the city of Houston on condition that it be dedicated to the black leader. 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. ''Things just happen to me.'' They gave major gifts of art to the school, bought land to expand the campus and hired Philip Johnson to design new buildings. They hated the result, and hid it away. The gray clapboard of the museum is in keeping with the small, traditional timber-frame homes -some used as foundation offices, others rented to friends, associates and various locals - that surround it. Pianissimo: The Very Quiet Menil Collection., Holmes, Ann, and Patricia C. Johnson. Soon, Rice was a beehive of arts activities. 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