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. Dia was founded in New York City in 1974 by Philippa de Menil, Heiner Friedrich, and Helen Winkler to help artists achieve visionary projects that might not otherwise be realized because of scale or scope. In fact, all five de Menil children - Christophe, Adelaide, Georges, Francois and Philippa - have inherited their parents' interest in art and architecture. [1] She also published articles on film technology in the French journal La revue du cinma.[4]. 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. Seven years later, John joined Schlumberger Ltd. Their backgrounds were very different. As a trustee there, John was responsible in 1961 for bringing in as director the distinguished but controversial James Johnson Sweeney, former director of the Guggenheim Museum in New York. You might try using the wildcards * and ? There are some who think they're crazy. And early last year, facing an inquiry by the New York State Attorney General into its management practices - with a debt of more than $6 million, a projected budget of $5 million, but no visible source of income - Dia began to pull in its horns. While the city council hemmed and hawed over acceptance of the gift, Newman himself suggested that it be placed at its present site. It was inescapable. I never really wanted to collect, but the idea of a foundation that would help artists build excited me. 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. 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. Menil Archives, The Menil Collection, Houston. His interest in architecture, he says, comes from his father and from working with Charles Gwathmey, who designed his East Hampton house. ''Dominique and John were entirely separate people who worked not so much together but in parallel ways,'' suggests Fred Hofheinz. Carr, Annemarie Weyl, and Laurence J. Morrocco. The foundation's extravagant expenditures have necessitated a family rescue effort. 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. Essays and short texts describe the de Menils' collecting; their patronage of modern architecture; their promotion of film as an art form; their struggles . Hickey-Robertson. Later in his life, spending more time in New York, he would give lavish dinners for them and make the rounds -in a chauffeured limousine -of poetry readings, performances and parties, bestowing gifts on those who interested him. But when the artist arrived, she appeared for a moment only. At the sale, Dominique bought a Barnett Newman and Adelaide picked up her first de Kooning.) In return for her efforts, the Holy Bishopric of Cyprus allowed the works to remain in Houston on a 20-year loan. 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). De Menil, who lived in Houston until she was 12 and was raised Catholic, has been a practicing Muslim for more than 30 years, and is now known as Sheikha Fariha al-Jerrahi, having been officially . [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. 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. Description Art and Activism surveys John and Dominique de Menil's projects in art, architecture, and civil and human rights, initiatives that deeply affected the city of Houston and often national and even international communities. The stock decline was an element in the recent heavy retrenchment of the Dia Foundation, entirely supported by Philippa de Menil, to the tune of several million dollars a year. By the 1960s the de Menils had gravitated toward the major American post-war movements of abstract expressionism, pop art, and minimalism. In 1980, the woman she was had become a Sufi dervish named Fariha al-Jerrahi, and when the house of Dia fell, she moved on. 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. de? ''But there were all these weird paintings hanging on the walls,'' she says. The Rothko Chapel, with its sculpture, Barnett Newman's ''Broken Obelisk,'' expresses their involvement not only with art, but with politics and religion. "[15] 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".[16]. Fariha, born Philippa de Menil, . 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. I'M VERY PROUD OF them,'' Dominique says of the children, ''and gratified that they have John's and my interests. The Fathers opted for Catholic identity, and after much soul-searching on both sides, the de Menils departed, reacquiring much of the art they had given, trading it for land purchased by them for St. Thomas's expansion. We - my brothers and sisters and I - each have a different focus. The reunited family went to Houston, then the American headquarters for the company. He took the the couple around to galleries, singing the praises of the modernists. '', ''I wanted a functional museum and they wanted great architecture,'' comments Dominique. John listened patiently to the telephone tirade and then said, ''Listen, my friend, why don't you come to my house for a drink? [30], In the 1980s de Menil again began looking for an architect to design the museum, eventually commissioning Renzo Piano, a renowned Italian architect known for his provocative Centre Georges Pompidou building in Paris, to come up with a design that would fit her vision for the museum. 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. She is not a ''go-getter,'' she insists in her French-tinged English. Though the collection has strengths in Mediterranean antiquities, Eurasian and European artifacts, African art, Cubism, Surrealism and contemporary American and European works, it lacks a museum ''profile.'' You were sharing in the great adventure of making a work of art that was maybe too crazy to realize in any other way.'' Like the Rockefellers, the de Menils are distinguished by the variety and scope of their art interests. He met Philippa through Helen Winkler, an employee of the Menil Foundation. 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. [6], "Shaykha Fariha al Jerrahi | WISE Muslim Women Shaykha Fariha al Jerrahi", https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Fariha_al_Jerrahi&oldid=1096401510, This page was last edited on 4 July 2022, at 07:16. 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. Soon, Rice was a beehive of arts activities. 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. Inevitably, John's impulse to control brought him into conflict with other trustees, notably John Blaffer, son of a powerful Houston family. Hugetz, Edward, and Brian Huberman. [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. [10] They bought more than two hundred pieces from Klejman's New York Gallery. A big show of the family's art collections was held at the Grand Palais in Paris two years ago. ''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. Whitman brought a suit against Dia, which is pending. Why Not Dedicate Art to King, De Menil Asks City Council., Richard, Paul. The issue was really the kind of institution St. Thomas was to be - would it maintain its Catholic identity or would it become a secular college? But one family member suggests that the figure ''could easily be twice that amount.'' . 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. 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. 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 departmentincluding the art history facultyand Media Center to Rice University, where they founded the Institute for the Arts to manage the exhibition program at Rice Museum. ''Wasn't I there?'' She also established the scar Romero Award, named after the slain El Salvadoran bishop. 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. [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. (For their honeymoon, he took Dominique on a bus trip through Morocco.) John shot from the hip. The day and hour were set, with Dominique's agreement. THE NEW BUILDING will be close to another, even more un-Houstonian de Menil monument. Raised a Protestant, Dominique converted to Roman Catholicism in 1932. Today, Dominique says, her relationship with the still-small institution is ''very friendly. ''If it hadn't been for them, we wouldn't be here,'' says Father Frank H. Bredeweg, now president of the college. 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. When John de Menil walked into Alexander Iolas Gallery in Paris one day in 1964, Jean Tinguely's moving, noisy sculptures stole part of . 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. He was my particular nemesis. A local citizen once called John up and railed against him as a ''red'' for his support of King. Staff Interface | ArchivesSpace.org | Hosted by LYRASIS, Art and soul of GZ [ground zero] imams holy-pal heiress, 2010-09-27. ''It's absolutely crazy what they did,'' says one New York dealer. (A question mark next to a word above means that we couldn't find it, but clicking the word might provide spelling suggestions.) Friedrich and his then wife Philippa de Menil, together with Helen Winkler, established the Dia Art Foundation in 1973. 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. [2] Contents 1 Early life 2 Collecting art 3 Art patron Dominique de Menil, Quoted in Browning 1983, 37. 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. [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. She received direct transmission from him in 1980. Also on display in Richmond Hall are four examples of Flavin's "monuments" to V. Tatlin, created between 1964 and 1969.[1][36]. ''What I inherited was my mother's craving. Indeed, Adelaide has recently given the museum an important piece from her collection. she asked, in genuine surprise. 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. 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. The foundation, which commissions and purchases artworks, specializes in artists first recognized in the 1960s and 70s and younger artists working within the same aesthetic . (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.) The couple also has a house in Bridgehampton, L.I., and a 60-square-mile holding in Texas, known as Mesquite Ranch, that is being restored, possibly for use as a retreat or conference center. 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. The idea was born, Dominique says, out of her ''shock'' at discovering segregation ''when I arrived in the United States, and wondering why, when great artists have seen blacks as beautiful, dignified, noble, they were not considered so here.''. THE DE MENILS' IN-volvement in the Houston art world began in the 1940's - an inevitable consequence of Father Couturier's evangelism. ''John's feeling for the underdog really started in his childhood,'' says Dominique. The enigmatic Friedrich quit New York, disappeared into a wandering, art-mad exile; Philippa de Menil, the embattled heiress, had long since ceased to exist. They helped make a black militant who hated white people into a humanitarian.'' (Dia, the Greek. 1538-1576 - Anne de Barbay, fille de Guyot de Barbay et d'Anne de Frenelle. She has organized a forthcoming book ''Men's Lives'' - with specially commissioned photographs, and a text by Peter Matthiessen -about them. (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 middle child is Georges, an elegant and articulate - if slightly stuffy -scholar of 45 who more or less oversees the family's financial matters. 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. A good part of the Menil Collection comprises objects of African and other tribal art, and the foundation began, in 1961, a long-range research project, ''The Image of the Black in Western Art.'' She began to collect work by contemporary Americans even before her parents did, and exerted considerable influence on their acquisitions in the field. 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. The founders had . [31] The result was a museum that appeared "small on the outside, butas big as possible inside". 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". [1], The Menil campus also includes the Byzantine Fresco Chapel. She grew up, the middle sister of three, watching her physicist father, Conrad Schlumberger, struggle to perfect his invention, an electric measuring device that disclosed the location of oil deposits. 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. Philippa de Menil New York. 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. Though John was born to a titled military family, he grew up poor, thanks to the efforts of his father to pay off a relative's debt. by Paula Newton November 11, 2013. by Paula Newton November 11, 2013. ''I was interested in art, but shy and out of contact with the art world. For years, she has quietly but wholeheartedly backed the work of such performance artists, dancers and musicians as Robert Whitman, La Monte Young, Robert Wilson, Twyla Tharp, Philip Glass, Trisha Brown and Terry Riley. Their actions in Houston focused upon the Civil Rights Movement in particular. "[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. 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. 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