As a result, Georges's wife Lois has been appointed to Dia's reconstituted board, and Heiner has resigned. Flowering, in a way. de? But Heiner lives in a dream. It will house the more than 10,000 objects acquired by the couple. They were compelling.'' to find the word you're looking for. She received direct transmission from him in 1980. Adelaide wished that the starkly modern house, designed by the then-Mies-disciple Philip Johnson, could be like everyone else's. .''. [1] 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. In 1986, de Menil deepened her involvement in social causes, establishing the Carter-Menil Human Rights Foundation with former president Jimmy Carter to "promote the protection of human rights throughout the world". What they do should be balanced against what's possible.''. To suggest the institution's role in enabling such ambitions, they selected the name "Dia," taken from the Greek word meaning "through." Dominique, who maintains three homes herself, shakes her head indulgently over their ''extravagance.''. ''Once the children had the disposal of their own fortunes,'' Dominique says, ''John and I never wanted to interfere.'' . ''I get that so much from my mother - decide what you're aiming at and strike out after it. They were the first Americans to influence Europeans. While fostering bonds with the greater Sufi & Muslim American communities, the role of women in Islam and spiritual ecology have been of special importance to her message. Not helpful? ''Dominque said, 'I'll take it,' and she bundled herself in a tacky fur coat and went trudging through the rain, arriving at Levi-Strauss's looking like a drowned rat. This in turn enabled the inventors to determine the location of an oil deposit. 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. She badly needed a religion.''. 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. Until very recently, Christophe also had a sizable house in East Hampton, but it burned down during Hurricane Gloria last fall. I could have worked with Dominique.''. ''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. ''You support artists by buying their work, not by making shrines to them.''. THE DE MENILS' civil-rights activities earned them epithets ranging from '''radical chic'' to ''Communist.'' With Francois and Georges, she is also making a film about her father, who carried on his venturesome art and community activities while functioning as a key executive in the development of Schlumberger Ltd. ''She is painfully shy, but generous and thoughtful,'' a friend says. ''They came as intellectuals to an intellectual void,'' says Isaac Arnold Jr., chairman of Houston's Museum of Fine Arts and also of Quintana Petroleum. Inheritance (oil) 20th-century art Icon Link Plus Icon; Icon Link Plus Icon; Icon Link Plus Icon; Icon Link Plus Icon; Overview Newswire RobbReport Pianissimo: The Very Quiet Menil Collection., Holmes, Ann, and Patricia C. Johnson. A European artist, who is a friend of Adelaide's and Ted's, remembers making an appointment through them to see Dominique on a visit to Houston. It was inescapable. Explains William Camfield, whom the de Menils brought over as professor of art history from St. Thomas, ''At Rice, the de Menils said, 'Let's see if it works and if you like it. You were sharing in the great adventure of making a work of art that was maybe too crazy to realize in any other way.'' ''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. It also features temporary exhibitions. John's assertiveness made itself felt even as he lay dying of cancer, when he prepared a scenario for his funeral. ''We changed the basic political structure of Houston,'' says Hofheinz -now chairman of Tangent Oil and Gas - whose four-year mayoral stint corresponded with Houston's ''go-go'' period of growth. ''I was interested in art, but shy and out of contact with the art world. Heiner's Wagnerian ambitions to serve as impresario for artists with grand-scale visions appealed to her. 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. 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. Both born in Houston - their three elders were born in France - they grew up in the rebellious 60's and seem to have come to terms more uneasily than the others with the Schlumberger aura. [32], Dedicated on June 7, 1987, the Menil Collection exhibits objects from John and Dominique de Menil's collection, including selections of African Art, a vast collection of Surrealist pieces, and the work of a number of contemporary American artists such as Jackson Pollock, Barnett Newman, Clyfford Still, Robert Motherwell, Cy Twombly, and Mark Rothko. ''It began to look more like de Menil University than St. Thomas. She began to collect work by contemporary Americans even before her parents did, and exerted considerable influence on their acquisitions in the field. 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. Francois's taste in art is more of a mixed bag than Christophe's, ranging from works by Matisse, de Chirico, Picasso and Rothko to a flock of life-size fake sheep by the French artists Francois-Xavier and Claude Lalanne. (Brought up a Protestant, she converted to Catholicism to marry John.) [1] She was awarded the National Medal of Arts in 1986. The Menil Collection's discreet, low-key architecture befits its site in Montrose, a modest, socially mixed residential area of Houston. ''But there were all these weird paintings hanging on the walls,'' she says. which cannot be easily produced, fi-nanced or owned by individual collectors because of their cost and magnitude". ''For instance, there was a big purple and yellow canvas by Leger, and I hated to take my friends through the hall where they could see it. 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. 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. THE COUPLE'S MOST INTENSE Houston involvement was with St. Thomas University, a small Catholic college. The Dan Flavin installation consists of two horizontal green fluorescent lights on the eastern and western sides of the building's exterior, two sets of diagonal white lights on the foyer walls, and a large work in the main interior space featuring pink, yellow, green, blue, and ultraviolet lights. [29] The Foundation offered the CarterMenil Human Rights Prize, sponsored by the Rothko Chapel, to organizations or individuals for their commitment to human rights. "I dreamed of preserving some of the intimacy I had enjoyed with works of art," she wrote. [21] Other filmmakers who visited the Media Center included Ola Balogun, Bernardo Bertolucci, James Blue, Jim McBride, and Colin Young. The artists previously collaborated with the Dia Art Foundation, which was founded by Philippa de Menil (Dominique and John's daughter), to realise their monumental immersive light installation. They began to concentrate on the more established Museum of Fine Arts. 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. . [35], De Menil's final project was a 1996 commission of three site-specific light installations by Minimalist sculptor Dan Flavin for Richmond Hall, a former Weingarten's grocery store in Houston. [1] She was awarded the National Medal of Arts in 1986. Leland, a civil-rights and antiwar activist who was studying to be a pharmacist at Texas Southern University, had dropped out to run the campaign of a black minister, D. Leon Everett, who sought a seat on the then-all-white board. Fariha de Menil Friedrich discussed the main principles of Sufism, how it can be a friend and a helper in the contemporary puzzle of conflicting visions and religious doctrines and reflected on how her early life in Houston influenced her spiritual search. They helped make a black militant who hated white people into a humanitarian.'' ''If only my father could see him now,'' his sister Adelaide has remarked proudly. Inevitably, John's impulse to control brought him into conflict with other trustees, notably John Blaffer, son of a powerful Houston family. And there is no question that Houston's cultural establishment takes the new museum quite seriously. [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. Her second husband is. 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. Rites were performed not only by a Catholic prelate, but a black Baptist minister, a rabbi, and a Buddhist priest. 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. Her second husband is is a German-born former art dealer, Heiner Friedrich, with whom she is deeply engaged in Sufism. And the approaching actuality still surprises her: ''It's a long way from my early days as a young wife and mother. 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. [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. Soon, Rice was a beehive of arts activities. As with the de Menils' Houston home, by Texas standards the building is more than a little understated. 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. tion in 1974, run by Philippa de Menil, Heiner Friedrich and Helen Winkler. 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. Woe Follows the Obelisk., Hobdy, D. J. "[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. 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.
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