Dominique de Menil (née 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.Helfenstein, Josef, and Laureen Schipsi. Art and Activism: Projects of John and Dominique de Menil. Houston: The Menil Collection, 2010. She was awarded the National Medal of Arts in 1986.Lifetime Honors - National Medal of Arts Retrieved May 17, 2010.
Early life De Menil was born Dominique Isaline Zelia Henriette Clarisse Schlumberger, the daughter of Conrad Schlumberger and Louise Schlumberger (née Delpech), Calvinist Alsatians. 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. She also published articles on film technology in the French journal La revue du cinéma.Schlumberger, Dominique. "Les divers procédés du film parlant". Le revue du cinéma 2, no. 9 (April 1930): 43–52.
In 1930 she met the banker Jean de Ménil (who later anglicized his name to John de Menil), and they were married the next year. Raised a Protestant, Dominique converted to Roman Catholicism in 1932. The de Menils' Catholic faith, especially their interest in the Catholic theologian Yves Congar's teachings on ecumenism, would become crucial to the development of their collecting ethos in the coming decades. 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), François (a filmmaker and architect), and Philippa (co-founder of the Dia Art FoundationGlueck, Grace. "The de Menil Family: The Medici of Modern Art". New York Times Magazine, May 18, 1986: 28–46, 66, 106, 113. and the leader of a Sufi order in Lower Manhattan).
Following the outbreak of World War II and the Nazi occupation of France, the de Menils emigrated from Paris to the United States of America. They maintained residences in New York and France but settled in Houston, where John would eventually become president of Schlumberger Overseas (Middle and Far East) and Schlumberger Surenco (Latin America), two branches of the Houston-based oilfield services corporation.
Collecting art John and Dominique de Menil began collecting art intensively in the 1940s, beginning with a purchase of Paul Cézanne's 1895 painting Montagne (Mountain) in 1945. 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. They ultimately amassed more than 17,000 paintings, sculptures, decorative objects, prints, drawings, photographs, and rare books.La rime et la raison: Les collections Ménil (Houston–New York). Exhibition catalogue. Paris: Galeries nationales du Grand Palais, 1984.
The de Menils were particularly interested in modern European art, and a core strength of the collection was the many Cubist, Surrealist, and other Modernist works they acquired. By the 1960s the de Menils had gravitated toward the major American post-war movements of abstract expressionism, pop art, and minimalism.The Menil Collection: A Selection from the Paleolithic to the Modern Era. New York: Abrams, 1987. Rev. ed., 1997. 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, René Magritte, Robert Rauschenberg, Dorothea Tanning, and Andy Warhol.
The de Menils, however, did not limit their acquisitions to modern art, and their eclectic tastes became a hallmark of their collecting practices. 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.Van Dyke, Kristina. African Art from The Menil Collection. Houston: Menil Foundation; New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2008. De Menil credited dealer and adviser John Klejman with shaping their tastes in African and Oceanic objects, saying that he "made buying African art very tempting".Dominique de Menil, Quoted in Browning 1983, 37 They bought more than two hundred pieces from Klejman's New York Gallery. 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. 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.
Art patron 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. In 1949 they commissioned the architect Philip Johnson to design their home in the River Oaks neighborhood in Houston. One of the first International Style residences in Texas, it generated controversy not only by standing out amongst the mansions of River Oaks but also by pairing Johnson's clean, modernist lines with a bold color palette and eclectic interior design by Charles James.Middleton, William. “A House That Rattled Texas Windows.” New York Times, June 3, 2004. The de Menils filled their home with art and hosted many of the leading artists, scientists, civil rights activists, and intellectuals of the day.
Spurred in part by the lack of a real arts community in Houston,de Menil, John. “A Provincial Town.” In Houston: Text by Houstonians, 127–29. Marrero, La.: Hope Haven Press, 1949. 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.Brennan, Marcia, Alfred Pacquement, and Ann Temkin. A Modern Patronage: de Menil Gifts to American and European Museums. Introduction by Josef Helfenstein. Houston: Menil Foundation; New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2007. They were instrumental in the Contemporary Arts Association's decision to hire Jermayne MacAgy as its director; she curated several groundbreaking exhibitions, including "The Sphere of Mondrian" and "Totems Not Taboo: An Exhibition of Primitive Art."Jermayne MacAgy: A Life Illustrated by an Exhibition. Exhibition catalogue. Houston: University of St. Thomas, 1968. In 1954 they founded the Menil Foundation, a non-profit organization dedicated to the "support and advancement of religious, charitable, literary, scientific and educational purposes".Menil Foundation - Handbook of Texas Online Retrieved May 18, 2010.
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. 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. They established the university's Media Center in 1967. 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. 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.
After being met with increasing resistance by the more traditional Basilian clergy at the University of St. Thomas, in 1969 the de Menils moved the art department—including the art history faculty—and Media Center to Rice University, where they founded the Institute for the Arts to manage the exhibition program at Rice Museum. 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",Blake Gopnik, Warhol: A Life as Art London: Allen Lane. March 5, 2020. p. 601 an exhibition of objects selected by Warhol from the storage vaults of the Museum of Art at Rhode Island School of Design. At Rice, the de Menils also cultivated their interest in film, working with such noted filmmakers as Roberto Rossellini, who made several trips to Houston to teach Rice University students and create television documentaries.Hugetz, Edward, and Brian Huberman. "The Memory of Rossellini in Texas." In Roberto Rossellini, 107–15. Rome: Edizione Ente Autonomo Gestione Cinema, 1987. Published by the Ministero del Turismo e della Spettacolo for the multimedia project "Rossellini in Texas", October 1987. The de Menils supported Rice University astrophysics professor Donald D. Clayton for a two-week residence in Rome in June–July 1970 for daily work with Rossellini, 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.Donald D. Clayton, "The Dark Night Sky: a personal adventure in cosmology" Quadrangle/The New York Times Book Co. (New York 1975) Other filmmakers who visited the Media Center included Ola Balogun, Bernardo Bertolucci, James Blue, Jim McBride, and Colin Young.
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. 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. Photography became an important component of the collection, which includes works by Eve Arnold, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Danny Lyon, Hans Namuth, and Eve Sonneman.
Civil and human rights In addition to becoming known as collectors and patrons of art, John and Dominique de Menil were vocal champions of human rights worldwide. Their actions in Houston focused upon the Civil Rights Movement in particular. In 1960 they launched the ambitious scholarly research project "The Image of the Black in Western Art," directed by art historian Ladislas Bugner. 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 The Warburg Institute and Harvard University.Bugner, Ladislas, ed. The Image of the Black in Western Art. 4 vols. New York: William Morrow; Houston: Menil Foundation, 1976 to present. After Dominique de Menil's death the photographs and books assembled to support this research were donated to the Warburg Institute in the University of London.