Says Dominique, ''The idea of the foundation was marvelous, and they've done great things. Meanwhile, grandiosity and the Schlumberger stock slide have caused the serious foundering of the Dia Foundation, established by Philippa and Heiner Friedrich, to support the ambitious projects of several hand-picked artists. After his death, he lay in state, wrapped in a sheet in his own bed. Dominique Isaline Zelia Henriette Clarisse Schlumberger. The foundation operates Dia:Beacon (est. [1] She also published articles on film technology in the French journal La revue du cinma.[4]. 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. [2], Sheikha Fariha al-Jerrahi leads devotional prayers, ceremonies of divine remembrance, and provides spiritual guidance to initiates from her seat at the Dergah al-Farah in downtown Manhattan. "I dreamed of preserving some of the intimacy I had enjoyed with works of art," she wrote. Over the course of nearly 20 years, beginning in the late 1940's, they set up a full-fledged art and art history department, hiring -and paying for - teachers, researchers and what one of the former de-scribes as ''others with whom they have loose and flexible arrangements.'' In 1974, Fr Dominique de Menil, Quoted in Browning 1983, 37. [7], 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. Its basis was a device that was lowered by cable into the ground to measure the electrical resistance of formations in the earth. Institute of Religion Accepts Controversial Broken Obelisk.. But, he says, ''I was fortunate to be exposed to their interest in art as part of the natural fabric of life. Dia Art Foundation, American foundation that supports contemporary art and artists, est. The public would never know museum fatigue and would have the rare joy of sitting in front of a painting and contemplating it Works would appear, disappear, and reappear like actors on a stage. 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. A new board was appointed. 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. He took the the couple around to galleries, singing the praises of the modernists. The de Menils' involvement with blacks has not only been on the political level. ''It was very grand and typically him,'' says Adelaide. Dr. Martin Luther King was assassinated, they offered it to the city of Houston on condition that it be dedicated to the black leader. I spent hours talking with John about world politics and philosophy. philippa de menilare there really purple owls. He was my particular nemesis. 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. Behind that fragile, otherworldly facade is a complex person of very ambitious reach.''. We - my brothers and sisters and I - each have a different focus. ''It began to look more like de Menil University than St. Thomas. to find the word you're looking for. Now I have a vocation and much better bearings.''. 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. (An uncle, Jean Schlumberger, helped found the celebrated literary magazine Nouvelle Revue Francaise). ''She feels a museum is all about interior spaces. Casey Lesser. [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]). The caller hung up. 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. Her ideas are defended by her son-the-architectural-student. The Fathers, too, can now see both sides. Essays and short texts describe the de Menils' collecting; their patronage of modern architecture; their promotion of film as an art form; their struggles . [8][9] 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". For the marriage, Dominique converted to John's Catholicism, a move that at first shocked her clannish family. 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 . Raised in a code of stern Protestant morality, Dominique is quite prepared to give a million to a worthy cause, but not to spend money on such frivolities as taxis, according to Edmund (Ted) Carpenter. Friedrich has exhibited works by Blinky Palermo, Walter De Maria, Donald Judd, La Monte Young, Andy Warhol, Michael Heizer, and Joseph Beuys, among others in his galleries in Germany, but became less interested in short term gallery installations and through Dia began to collect, and support majo Though designed by one of the architects of the flamboyant Pompidou Center in Paris, which wears its plumbing on its facade, it bears no resemblance to that outrageous folly. Christophe, a tall, graceful woman, who has a long history of supporting ''difficult'' art projects, began designing costumes for Robert Wilson in 1981. Whitman brought a suit against Dia, which is pending. ''We didn't really buy art, because we didn't have the money and we didn't think of it,'' says Dominique, whose scientist father considered spending money on art frivolous. Heiner's Wagnerian ambitions to serve as impresario for artists with grand-scale visions appealed to her. They helped make a black militant who hated white people into a humanitarian.'' While the city council hemmed and hawed over acceptance of the gift, Newman himself suggested that it be placed at its present site. When they arrived there from Paris in the early 1940's, they were not yet as wealthy as they would become, but they were almost too interesting. Articles in Zest section The Menil Opens.. 1584-1586 - Franoise du Chtelet. 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. In 1949 they commissioned the architect Philip Johnson to design their home in the River Oaks neighborhood in Houston. 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. 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. Not helpful? Dominique and John de Menil, circa 1967. They established the university's Media Center in 1967. 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. 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. 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. . 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. Dominique, who maintains three homes herself, shakes her head indulgently over their ''extravagance.''. And she goes on collecting - though at a much slower pace, she says, because prices have risen so high. Heiner Friedrich and Fariha Friedrich (formerly Philippa de Menil), who 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. A painter himself, he had been a prime mover in the commissioning of Leger, Matisse and Rouault to do work for churches in France. Initially the stated aim as written in its first report was to "plan, realise and maintain public projects of artists. ''Wasn't I there?'' Modern Reliquary: In a New Houston Museum, Francois de Menil Crafts an Authentic Setting for Two Byzantine Frescoes., Last edited on 16 December 2022, at 21:42, Houston-based oilfield services corporation. 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. To supple-ment the scanty family income, John dropped out of school to work in a bank. And the approaching actuality still surprises her: ''It's a long way from my early days as a young wife and mother. she asked, in genuine surprise. She said. You were sharing in the great adventure of making a work of art that was maybe too crazy to realize in any other way.'' ''Mother lives at two levels,'' says Georges. 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. 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. After undergoing revisions by several architects, including Philip Johnson, Howard Barnstone, and Eugene Aubry, the non-denominational Rothko Chapel was dedicated on Menil Foundation property in 1971 in a ceremony that included members of various religions. 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. 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