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. It is named for the late Abstract Expressionist painter Mark Rothko, whom the de Menils commissioned to do 14 dark, meditative paintings that are the only adornment of the octagonal building. "Defying prejudice, Islam's mystical, musical strain appeals to New Yorkers", Menil Foundation - Handbook of Texas Online, "A Special Prize of the Carter-Menil Human Rights Foundation", https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Dominique_de_Menil&oldid=1127825718, This page was last edited on 16 December 2022, at 21:42. Ironically, planned in a time of boom for Houston, the museum will be finished in a time of bust, due to falling oil prices. They helped make a black militant who hated white people into a humanitarian.'' (For their honeymoon, he took Dominique on a bus trip through Morocco.) ''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. Menil Archives, The Menil Collection, Houston. Unlike the normal superwealthy, their pursuits do not run to clubs, yachts or horseracing. 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. As with the de Menils' Houston home, by Texas standards the building is more than a little understated. Actually, her children venerate Dominique almost to the point of copying her.'' It was inescapable. Inheritance (oil) 20th-century art Icon Link Plus Icon; Icon Link Plus Icon; Icon Link Plus Icon; Icon Link Plus Icon; Overview Newswire RobbReport Dominique's way of not always paying full attention to this world has been transmitted to some of her offspring. I try to stay close to them, and as time goes on, we are more and more in touch.'' Shortly thereafter, she gave him a book of Cartier-Bresson photographs, inscribed to him by the master himself, who had been staying with her for the weekend. Her second husband is. The Barnett Newman ''Broken Obelisk,'' made of Cor-Ten steel, stands 26 feet high in a reflecting pool that faces the chapel's entrance. Yet these holdings, together with those of the nearby Museum of Fine Arts and the Contemporary Arts Museum, should boost Houston's cultural status to that of a world-class center for the visual arts. Few philanthropists of the 20th century contributed more to the American art world than Dominique and John de Menil. I spent hours talking with John about world politics and philosophy. In the dining room, 18 rare chairs by the Viennese architect Josef Hoffman surround a pair of tables designed by Gwathmey. Designed by the architect Charles Gwathmey and built at a reported cost of $6 million, the house - called ''Toad Hall'' by its owner - is a fantasy version of a luxury ocean liner, with a three-story greenhouse, screening room, game room, exercise salon, wine cellar and the obligatory swimming pool. Since its inception, the chapel has witnessed all manner of events, from high-minded colloquia to weddings, bar mitzvahs, a Sufi ceremony by whirling dervishes from Turkey, a reception for the Dalai Lama and avant-garde concerts. ''But there were all these weird paintings hanging on the walls,'' she says. 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. 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. 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. [1] American Sufi leader 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. [1] She was awarded the National Medal of Arts in 1986. [2] Contents 1 Early life 2 Collecting art 3 Art patron Notable exhibitions at Rice Museum organized with the help of the de Menils were "The Machine as Seen at the End of the Mechanical Age", curated by Pontus Hulten for the Museum of Modern Art, New York, and "Raid the Icebox 1 with Andy Warhol",[17] an exhibition of objects selected by Warhol from the storage vaults of the Museum of Art at Rhode Island School of Design. That same year they provided the University of St. Thomas, a small Catholic institution in Houston, with funding to build Strake Hall and Jones Hall, designed by Philip Johnson per their recommendation. ''Mother lives at two levels,'' says Georges. de? [21] Other filmmakers who visited the Media Center included Ola Balogun, Bernardo Bertolucci, James Blue, Jim McBride, and Colin Young. They began to concentrate on the more established Museum of Fine Arts. Dominique de Menil, the daughter of Conrad Schlumberger and his wife, Louise Delpech, was born in Paris on March 23, 1908. And she was surrounded by accomplished relatives. ''If it hadn't been for them, we wouldn't be here,'' says Father Frank H. Bredeweg, now president of the college. Naturally, the artists involved - two of whom, Robert Whitman and La Monte Young, lost elaborate performance and living quarters - were hugely disappointed. Eventually, the de Menils and their entourage became so much a part of the St. Thomas scene that ''it became difficult to operate without stepping on one of their toes,'' says Father Patrick O. Braden, president of the college at the time. 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. To preserve these articles as they originally appeared, The Times does not alter, edit or update them. In 1974, Friedrich and his future wife, Philippa de Menil, the youngest child of Dominique and John de Menil of the Schlumberger oil fortune, created the Dia Art Foundation. 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. In 1960 they launched the ambitious scholarly research project "The Image of the Black in Western Art," directed by art historian Ladislas Bugner. The project, not universally appreciated by black scholars who tend to feel the emphasis should be placed on what blacks themselves have created, has so far published two books on the subject. Like the other children, he realizes fully that his parents are a difficult act to follow. Dia Art Foundation, American foundation that supports contemporary art and artists, est. 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. He wanted me to be exposed to every aspect of their life that would give me a chance to do things for my community. 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. The de Menils often personally recruited faculty members for the departments and brought many renowned artists and art historians to Houston, including Marcel Duchamp, Roberto Matta, and James Johnson Sweeney, whom they convinced to serve as museum director for the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston from 1961 to 1967. 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. (Spookily enough, another dwelling she had built on the same site about 20 years ago met the same end.) 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. Sweeney, the de Menils' man, was eventually dismissed, partly because he questioned the attributions of works the Blaffer family proposed to donate. They established the university's Media Center in 1967. Christophe, who at 53 is the oldest (and a grandmother of three, by her daughter Taya) has always been attuned to the avant-garde. They had a foreign accent, and political views that for Texas were extremely liberal. Schlumberger, Dominique. Although family members say that the decline has affected them ''minimally,'' Dominique de Menil notes, ''A lot has been eroded. Sheikh Muzaffer Ozak's most prominent disciples and successors in North America were Tosun Bayrak, Lex Hixon, and Philippa de Menil. Millionaires are different from us, as everyone knows, but as a clan the de Menils are different even from their fellow millionaires, most noticeably in the unconventional ways in which they spend their money. 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. THE NEW BUILDING will be close to another, even more un-Houstonian de Menil monument. 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. [1], The de Menils, however, did not limit their acquisitions to modern art, and their eclectic tastes became a hallmark of their collecting practices. .''. I never really wanted to collect, but the idea of a foundation that would help artists build excited me. ''Life had been tough for him, and he saw how hard it was for some others.''. key biscayne triathlon 2022 She received direct transmission from him in 1980. The two youngest children are Francois, 41, and Philippa, 39. As modernists, they recognized the profound formal and spiritual connections between contemporary works of art and the arts of ancient and indigenous cultures, broadening their collection to include works from classical Mediterranean and Byzantine cultures, as well as objects from Africa, Oceania, and the Pacific Northwest. John listened patiently to the telephone tirade and then said, ''Listen, my friend, why don't you come to my house for a drink? (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. The reunited family went to Houston, then the American headquarters for the company. '', Because Dominique saw ''collecting'' as pretentious, she was reluctant until recently to use the term. 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. What they do should be balanced against what's possible.''. And she goes on collecting - though at a much slower pace, she says, because prices have risen so high. "The de Menil Family: The Medici of Modern Art". And then, you can move in and we can move out.' 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. German gallery owner Heiner Friedrich, Fariha Friedrich (ne de Menil) and Helen Winkler Fosdick founded Dia. 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. Her second husband is is a German-born former art dealer, Heiner Friedrich, with whom she is deeply engaged in Sufism. 2003), the world's largest contemporary art museum, located in Beacon, N.Y. A converted factory, it contains unusually large unbroken spaces, ideal for exhibiting the frequently monumental and often minimalist (see minimalism) art and large-scale installations Dia favors. He did. [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]). 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 two recently returned from a trek to western Tibet to take in the ruins of an 11th-century Buddhist temple.) Since its 1980 high of 87 1/8 a share, the Schlumberger stock has slipped to its present $30 or so, due in part to the sluggish oil market. 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. [31] The result was a museum that appeared "small on the outside, butas big as possible inside". 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. Both pupils received new Sufi names. 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. 1529-1538 - Philippa de Ligniville, fille de Jean de Ligniville et de Jeanne d'Oiselet. And when John died in 1973, he left his estate in part to Dominique and in part to the Menil Foundation, set up in 1954 to support ecumenism, education, the arts and minority causes. They ultimately amassed more than 17,000 paintings, sculptures, decorative objects, prints, drawings, photographs, and rare books. [5] You were sharing in the great adventure of making a work of art that was maybe too crazy to realize in any other way.'' [18] The de Menils supported Rice University astrophysics professor Donald D. Clayton for a two-week residence in Rome in JuneJuly 1970 for daily work with Rossellini,[19][20] conceiving a film about cosmology that did not advance to filming but that was published in 1975 as a personal memoir of a life discovering the universe. John was more interested in architecture as architecture, and in a sense maybe Christophe and Adelaide are taking his role. When John de Menil walked into Alexander Iolas Gallery in Paris one day in 1964, Jean Tinguely's moving, noisy sculptures stole part of . 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. After Sheikh Nur's passing, she would take on the guidance of the Nur Ashki Jerrahi Sufi Order and it's circles of dervishes around the world. Inheritance (oil) 20th-century art Icon Link Plus Icon; Icon Link Plus Icon; Icon Link Plus Icon; Icon Link Plus Icon; Overview Newswire RobbReport Anyone can read what you share. And there is no question that Houston's cultural establishment takes the new museum quite seriously. The two met at a ball in Versailles, and were married in 1931, when Dominique was 22 and John was 27 and working in a Paris bank. A big show of the family's art collections was held at the Grand Palais in Paris two years ago. 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. There are some who think they're crazy. THE COUPLE'S MOST INTENSE Houston involvement was with St. Thomas University, a small Catholic college. Dominique, who was courted by other cities, says that the museum is in Houston because ''I was so encouraged here.'' (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.'') 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. The family has done everything as dedicated amateurs, but they helped the right people at the right time. (One takes off one's shoes on entering.) Yet for all her protests, her modest, low-key bearing conceals the drive of a captain of industry, and one of her associates says, ''The phrase 'steel butterfly' was coined for her. On the other hand, she can be imperious. Today, while Dominique still administers the Institute for the Arts, and contributes to such programs as fellowships for graduate students in art history, the de Menil presence there has shrunk considerably. [1], John and Dominique de Menil began collecting art intensively in the 1940s, beginning with a purchase of Paul Czanne's 1895 painting Montagne (Mountain) in 1945. 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. 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. At the sale, Dominique bought a Barnett Newman and Adelaide picked up her first de Kooning.) His interest in architecture, he says, comes from his father and from working with Charles Gwathmey, who designed his East Hampton house. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. Hewing to the European tradition of millionaire radicals, they came to be Houston's most rewardingly subversive citizens, bringing maverick ideas to the provinces about art, politics and what to do with money. John's assertiveness made itself felt even as he lay dying of cancer, when he prepared a scenario for his funeral. Occasionally the digitization process introduces transcription errors or other problems; we are continuing to work to improve these archived versions. "Les divers procds du film parlant". They were an extraordinary couple. Congressman Mickey Leland, it was one of the first racially integrated art shows in the United States.[28]. Indeed, Adelaide has recently given the museum an important piece from her collection. 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. Adelaide wished that the starkly modern house, designed by the then-Mies-disciple Philip Johnson, could be like everyone else's. Dominique de Menil, Quoted in Browning 1983, 37. ''Dominique and John were entirely separate people who worked not so much together but in parallel ways,'' suggests Fred Hofheinz. She is not a ''go-getter,'' she insists in her French-tinged English. Initially the stated aim as written in its first report was to "plan, realise and maintain public projects of artists. "I dreamed of preserving some of the intimacy I had enjoyed with works of art," she wrote. It also features temporary exhibitions. They are men mostly, with big egos and big ideas. ''I went to breakfast, lunch and dinner at their house and met every important person they knew. I wanted a wooden one.''. ''If only my father could see him now,'' his sister Adelaide has remarked proudly. And in a place where modern art was still regarded with suspicion, these ''pioneer cultural wildcatters,'' as one Houstonian calls them, established one of the world's outstanding collections, mounted shows and gave works to institutions - adding insult to injury by bringing the artists themselves to town. Christophe, a tall, graceful woman, who has a long history of supporting ''difficult'' art projects, began designing costumes for Robert Wilson in 1981. The minute the cops arrive, they form ranks. Then you can see how a Communist lives.'' The story goes back to the early 70's when Heiner, a European dealer, transferred his activities to New York, while retaining his interest in his Munich gallery. De Menil died in Houston on December 31, 1997. (Brought up a Protestant, she converted to Catholicism to marry John.) He later realized who had delivered the manuscript and wrote her a note.'' In, Donald D. Clayton, "The Dark Night Sky: a personal adventure in cosmology" Quadrangle/The New York Times Book Co. (New York 1975), Richard, Paul. (To help finance this expensive venture, she sold a number of important paintings last year at Sotheby-Parke Bernet, realizing more than $2 million. 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. The de Menils' involvement with blacks has not only been on the political level. ''What I inherited was my mother's craving. [2][3][4][5] Sheikh Muzaffer also gave direct transmission to fellow American dervish Sheikh Nur al-Anwar al-Jerrahi, who envisioned a radical and illumined path of the heart which he called Universal Islam. ''Things just happen to me.'' The Fathers, too, can now see both sides. 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. ALTHOUGH DOMI-nique's children function in somewhat lower gear, they also have made ambitious forays into - and even careers in - the arts. And Donald Judd has gone public with vociferous denunciations of the foundation, which is now but a shadow of itself. [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. At the age of 29, she met her mentor and guide on the path of Sufism upon his first visit to the Americas, Sheikh Muzaffer zak k al-Jerrahi of Istanbul. [1], The Menil campus also includes the Byzantine Fresco Chapel. Staff Interface | ArchivesSpace.org | Hosted by LYRASIS, Art and soul of GZ [ground zero] imams holy-pal heiress, 2010-09-27. Born 1947 Start a FameChain Trivia Philippa De Menil Family View Philippa De Menil's Family Tree and History, Ancestry and Genealogy It was there that the de Menils began their institutional involvement with art. Until very recently, Christophe also had a sizable house in East Hampton, but it burned down during Hurricane Gloria last fall. But one family member suggests that the figure ''could easily be twice that amount.'' They hated the result, and hid it away. "[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. she asked, in genuine surprise. ''I'm really too busy to see you today,'' she announced, and vanished. Ingersoll, Richard. They were the first Americans to influence Europeans. This in turn enabled the inventors to determine the location of an oil deposit. She also established the scar Romero Award, named after the slain El Salvadoran bishop. French expats who left Paris for the United States during World War II, the de Menils were the heirs to multiple fortunesincluding Dominique's family's booming oil equipment company .

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