(For their honeymoon, he took Dominique on a bus trip through Morocco.) 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. As a result, Georges's wife Lois has been appointed to Dia's reconstituted board, and Heiner has resigned. John listened patiently to the telephone tirade and then said, ''Listen, my friend, why don't you come to my house for a drink? BUT, AS DOMINIQUE likes to point out, she and John didn't start out rich. 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. 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. Dominique and John de Menil, circa 1967. Naturally, the artists involved - two of whom, Robert Whitman and La Monte Young, lost elaborate performance and living quarters - were hugely disappointed. Says Dominique, ''The idea of the foundation was marvelous, and they've done great things. Philippa de Menil (now Fariha Fatima al-Jerrahi) ominously reflected on the passing of her spiritual guide saying, "His death seemed to herald many new changes." [5] The new board began slashing at Dia contracts and real estate to get the budget under control with projects being dropped and dismantled at a fast rate. 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. Initially the stated aim as written in its first report was to "plan, realise and maintain public projects of artists. . 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. ''It began to look more like de Menil University than St. Thomas. It serves the vi-sion of a place ''for people in search of peace, meditation and a more intense consciousness of our time.'' 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.[7]. Heiner's Wagnerian ambitions to serve as impresario for artists with grand-scale visions appealed to her. At that point, the de Menils began to drift away from the museum. And Adelaide herself now has a home or two not like everyone else's, in which the art is at least as ''weird'' as that owned by her parents. I could have worked with Dominique.''. De Menil died in Houston on December 31, 1997. (Brought up a Protestant, she converted to Catholicism to marry John.) ''Christophe and I had chicken pox,'' remembers Adelaide. 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. ''What I inherited was my mother's craving. Inheritance (oil) 20th-century art Icon Link Plus Icon; Icon Link Plus Icon; Icon Link Plus Icon; Icon Link Plus Icon; Overview Newswire RobbReport By the 1960s the de Menils had gravitated toward the major American post-war movements of abstract expressionism, pop art, and minimalism. But the falling price of Schlumberger stock and serious administrative problems brought big financial troubles. Raised a Protestant, Dominique converted to Roman Catholicism in 1932. The foundation operates Dia:Beacon (est. 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. .''. * In the early 1990s Dia became a And there is no question that Houston's cultural establishment takes the new museum quite seriously. Most of the land and houses within a six-block radius, quietly assembled by John, are under de Menil ownership. (A question mark next to a word above means that we couldn't find it, but clicking the word might provide spelling suggestions.) But I think it will turn out superbly.''. She is not a ''go-getter,'' she insists in her French-tinged English. ''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. De Menil's largesse had created a kind of refuge from the speculative market in art then taking shape in New York, and a new canon of monumental, spiritually charged epics: a SoHo gallery floor buried, permanently, wi th black ear th; a hollowed-out volcano, transformed into a science-fictional archaeo-astronomical laboratory for perceptual flight; a Promethean bed of nails poking dangerously into the desert sky, awaiting some gargantuan penitent. So hooked were they that, ''We went crazy,'' says Dominique. To suggest the institution's role in enabling such ambitions, they selected the name "Dia," taken from the Greek word meaning "through." Sheikh Muzaffer Ozak's most prominent disciples and successors in North America were Tosun Bayrak, Lex Hixon, and Philippa de Menil. 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". ''He made us greedy,'' Dominique says, remembering that the priest once appeared for lunch with a Rouault painting under his arm. In 1974, Fr 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. In 1974, the two formed the Dia Foundation - the name is Greek for catalyst - subsidized solely by Philippa's shares in Schlumberger Ltd. Dia soon became one of the largest and most venturesome nonprofit funding sources in the field of contemporary art, buying up the works of certain artists -more than 125 of John Chamberlain's sculptures of crushed auto parts, for example - and sponsoring projects that range from Walter de Maria's permanent ''earth sculpture,'' comprising 280,000 pounds of dirt that fill a gallery in a SoHo building, to the vast ''Art Museum of the Pecos,'' in Marfa, Tex., a compound of more than 340 acres which has deployed an array of indoor and outdoor works by Donald Judd and other artists. (Box, page 38.) 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. ''Dominique and John were entirely separate people who worked not so much together but in parallel ways,'' suggests Fred Hofheinz. ''If it hadn't been for them, we wouldn't be here,'' says Father Frank H. Bredeweg, now president of the college. The building, primly sheathed in what one Houstonian calls ''Protestant gray clapboard'' (probably a first for a museum in this country), has on the ground floor exhibition spaces set in a landscaped garden. For starters, in a locale where the ideal home was a formal white-pillared mansion, the de Menils got Philip Johnson to do them a sprawling, one-level house. While the two had mutual feelings for art and social problems, Dominique was reticent and understated, John was ebullient, opinionated, action-oriented. While the de Menils' collecting and museum-building activities have been enthusiastically compared to those of the great Medici patrons, perhaps a more apt contemporary analogy is with the Rockefeller clan, which entered the art field in the early part of this century. 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. 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. Ever since, Dia's mission has been to commission, support, and present site-specific long-term installations and single-artists exhibitions to the public. He remembers admiring a photograph by Henri Cartier-Bresson at Adelaide's house. 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. 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. she subsidized a lobbying effort on their behalf. 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. She received direct transmission from him in 1980. 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. They were an extraordinary couple. philippa de menilare there really purple owls. The work these artists made changed, or at least questioned, the nature of art: what it. The Menil Collection's discreet, low-key architecture befits its site in Montrose, a modest, socially mixed residential area of Houston. She spoke at the Byzantine Fresco Chapel, inaugurating the Passionate Voices series, celebrating the 10th anniversary. THE DE MENILS' IN-volvement in the Houston art world began in the 1940's - an inevitable consequence of Father Couturier's evangelism. 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. 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. She studied mathematics and physics at the Sorbonne in Paris in 1927-28 . You might try using the wildcards * and ? Photography became an important component of the collection, which includes works by Eve Arnold, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Danny Lyon, Hans Namuth, and Eve Sonneman. The caller hung up. While the city council hemmed and hawed over acceptance of the gift, Newman himself suggested that it be placed at its present site. Married to Susan Silver, a Barnard graduate (their son was born in January), he collects contemporary art, furniture, craft objects of the turn-of-the-century Vienna Secessionist school and rare books on art and architecture. 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. They ultimately amassed more than 17,000 paintings, sculptures, decorative objects, prints, drawings, photographs, and rare books. (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 de Menil Family: The Medici of Modern Art". She has now turned her East Side carriage house into a fashion atelier. 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. 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. She recently bought another place near Sag Harbor, and in Manhattan she has a splendid three-story former carriage house with a swimming pool on the ground floor, redone with help from the Los Angeles architect Frank Gehry and the ''light sculptor'' Douglas Wheeler. [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. 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. Following Ozak's death, the tariqa was split into the Nur Ashki Jerrahi Sufi Order and the Jerrahi Order of America, with the former reflecting a more "universalistic" orientation, and the latter a more . Philippa de Menil New York. 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. Ironically, planned in a time of boom for Houston, the museum will be finished in a time of bust, due to falling oil prices. The Fathers, too, can now see both sides. They hated the result, and hid it away. 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. 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. [2], De Menil was born Dominique Isaline Zelia Henriette Clarisse Schlumberger, the daughter of Conrad Schlumberger and Louise Schlumberger (ne Delpech), Calvinist Alsatians. 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. Essays and short texts describe the de Menils' collecting; their patronage of modern architecture; their promotion of film as an art form; their struggles . And the approaching actuality still surprises her: ''It's a long way from my early days as a young wife and mother. [1] 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. ''I'm really too busy to see you today,'' she announced, and vanished. Website http://www.diaart.org Industries. 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. 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. "Les divers procds du film parlant". The Barnett Newman ''Broken Obelisk,'' made of Cor-Ten steel, stands 26 feet high in a reflecting pool that faces the chapel's entrance. [1], The Menil campus also includes the Byzantine Fresco Chapel. 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. 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. [33], The nearby Cy Twombly Gallery, opened in 1995, houses more than thirty of Twombly's paintings, sculptures, and works on paper. Their actions in Houston focused upon the Civil Rights Movement in particular. 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. She has organized a forthcoming book ''Men's Lives'' - with specially commissioned photographs, and a text by Peter Matthiessen -about them. Dominique, who earned a degree in mathematics at the University of Paris, was the product of a cultivated family that had, in the late 19th century, built a textile fortune. News Dia Sues Dia: Founders Try to Stop Art Auction. Back came a cable: ''BUY WHOLE SHOW.'' He met Philippa through Helen Winkler, an employee of the Menil Foundation. 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 . But when the artist arrived, she appeared for a moment only. He did. ''Not only were they considered radical, but really different. 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. In the dining room, 18 rare chairs by the Viennese architect Josef Hoffman surround a pair of tables designed by Gwathmey. Soon, Rice was a beehive of arts activities. Sheikha. The minute the cops arrive, they form ranks. An informal art historian and teacher, Dominique has also organized some remarkable exhibitions, innovatively installed. Helped by Citizens for Good Schools, a progressive organization supported by de Menil money, Everett won his seat, along with the other three candidates supported by the citizens group. [5] Each is not only glamorously housed in Manhattan, most of them on the Upper East Side, but also has one or two lavish residences elsewhere -Paris, Texas, the Hamptons. (The two recently returned from a trek to western Tibet to take in the ruins of an 11th-century Buddhist temple.) '', AT 78, DOMINIQUE IS A HANDSOME WOMAN OF frail, unassuming presence, whose ''spiritual'' mien and austere garb evoke the image of a medieval saint. 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. You were sharing in the great adventure of making a work of art that was maybe too crazy to realize in any other way.'' This is a digitized version of an article from The Timess print archive, before the start of online publication in 1996. [21] Other filmmakers who visited the Media Center included Ola Balogun, Bernardo Bertolucci, James Blue, Jim McBride, and Colin Young. "I dreamed of preserving some of the intimacy I had enjoyed with works of art," she wrote. Philippa de Menil. John shot from the hip. Schlumberger Ltd. - tHE Source of the de Menil family's fortune - was established in 1934 by Conrad Schlumberger, Dominique de Menil's father, and Marcel Schlumberger, her uncle. And I loathed the black-tiled floor. Philippa de Menil New York. ''Life had been tough for him, and he saw how hard it was for some others.''. Unlike the normal superwealthy, their pursuits do not run to clubs, yachts or horseracing. So serious, in fact, was the recent plight of Dia that Dominique asked her son Georges, a trustee of Philippa's inheritance, to help. Why Not Dedicate Art to King, De Menil Asks City Council., Richard, Paul. They were the first Americans to influence Europeans. 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. During an earlier school board election, the de Menils helped launch the political career of Mickey Leland, a young black militant from Houston's grubby Fifth Ward, who is now serving his fourth term in the United States Congress. As a subscriber, you have 10 gift articles to give each month. [34] The frescoesa dome with Christ Pantokrator and an apse depicting the Virgin Mary Panayiawere installed in a reliquary-like space interior where they were displayed until March 2012, at which time they were returned to the Church of Cyprus. They established the university's Media Center in 1967. 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. In 1981, on the chapel's 10th birthday, awards of $10,000 each were given to a dozen exemplary figures working in the cause of human rights -ranging from Tatiana Velikanova, a Russian mathematician, to Ned O'Gorman, a poet who founded the Children's Storefront in Harlem. Their associates tend not to be other superrichlings, but artists, film makers, poets, anthropologists, activists, professors, priests and - in the case of Philippa, who is involved with Sufism, an Islamic philosophy - sheiks and whirling dervishes. The family has done everything as dedicated amateurs, but they helped the right people at the right time. The German art dealer Heiner Friedrich; his wife, Philippa de Menil (daughter of the noted philanthropist Dominique de Menil); and art historian Helen Winkler founded Dia Art Foundation in 1974. [1] 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. Carr, Annemarie Weyl, and Laurence J. Morrocco. 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. Fariha Friedrichwhich is the name Philippa de Menil assumed after she and Heiner Friedrich embraced Sufi Islam and married in 1979was talking about the beginning of their foundation. ALTHOUGH DOMI-nique's children function in somewhat lower gear, they also have made ambitious forays into - and even careers in - the arts. Ingersoll, Richard. (To help finance this expensive venture, she sold a number of important paintings last year at Sotheby-Parke Bernet, realizing more than $2 million. ''You support artists by buying their work, not by making shrines to them.''. Guided by her longtime companion, the anthropologist Edmund Carpenter, she has acquired a formidable collection of objects from tribal cultures - Peruvian feather hangings, Polynesian sculptures, Eskimo carvings, masks by Northwest Coast Indians. The chapel, opened in 1971, is an all-faith center, a ''no man's land of God,'' Dominique says. ''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. Articles in Zest section The Menil Opens.. They have sold off a good deal of it over the years, and diversified their holdings. The founders had . Fariha, born Philippa de Menil, . Dominique de Menil, the daughter of Conrad Schlumberger and his wife, Louise Delpech, was born in Paris on March 23, 1908. Menil Archives, The Menil Collection, Houston. WHERE THE DE MENIL MONEY COMES FROM. The foundation's extravagant expenditures have necessitated a family rescue effort. Called ''well logging,'' the process became the basic asset of the company, eventually proving indispensable to oil companies around the world. She spoke at the Byzantine Fresco Chapel, inaugurating the Passionate Voices series, celebrating the 10th anniversary. 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. Kahn did produce some preliminary drawings, but the project was suspended in 1973 after John de Menil's and Kahn's deaths less than a year apart. A big show of the family's art collections was held at the Grand Palais in Paris two years ago. 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. [1] She was awarded the National Medal of Arts in 1986. Their fervor spilled over into us. [1] She also published articles on film technology in the French journal La revue du cinma.[4]. Congressman Mickey Leland, it was one of the first racially integrated art shows in the United States.[28]. Occasionally the digitization process introduces transcription errors or other problems; we are continuing to work to improve these archived versions. More than 1,000 mourners, an international assemblage including a local contingent of Black Panthers - to whom John had given money for setting up a free children's breakfast program - turned out in a heavy rainstorm. In 1960 they launched the ambitious scholarly research project "The Image of the Black in Western Art," directed by art historian Ladislas Bugner. "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. Dominique emphasizes that it's a very ''personal'' assemblage, ''idiosyncratic,'' with major gaps. 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. 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. ''Each branch of the Schlumberger clan has a wing,'' Christophe explains. 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. 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. ''But there were all these weird paintings hanging on the walls,'' she says. He remembers a rainy night in Paris, when he was ill with a cold but had a manuscipt to deliver to the noted anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss. After a substantial inheritance from their Schlumberger grandmother, nothing more would be forthcoming, the children were given to understand. Now I have a vocation and much better bearings.''. Looking back, I suppose we were too ambitious, and they felt overwhelmed.'' Eventually - despite their contributions of time and art - their ambitious projects brought them into conflict with budget-minded trustees. "[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]. The children and their mother also occasionally drop in on Val-Richer, the vast estate in Normandy passed down by Schlumberger ancestors. This in turn enabled the inventors to determine the location of an oil deposit. The de Menil museum in Houston, with its big main-floor display space and a second floor for open storage of art objects, embodies her vision of a museum as a place of ''beauty and enchantment, even before it's a teaching institution, a place where things can be seen on multiple levels, with a relationship made between the objects and the way they are presented.'' ''He reminds me of my father,'' she says, ''with his strong idealism and willingness to undertake certain things that others wouldn't. Behind that fragile, otherworldly facade is a complex person of very ambitious reach.''. At the sale, Dominique bought a Barnett Newman and Adelaide picked up her first de Kooning.) Christophe, for example, was once chided by an East Hampton hostess for not showing up at a party. [14] 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. Dominique, who was courted by other cities, says that the museum is in Houston because ''I was so encouraged here.'' [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 with the de Menils' Houston home, by Texas standards the building is more than a little understated. [29] The Foundation offered the CarterMenil Human Rights Prize, sponsored by the Rothko Chapel, to organizations or individuals for their commitment to human rights. 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. It also features temporary exhibitions. Dr. Martin Luther King was assassinated, they offered it to the city of Houston on condition that it be dedicated to the black leader. What they do should be balanced against what's possible.''. THE DE MENILS' civil-rights activities earned them epithets ranging from '''radical chic'' to ''Communist.'' Notes Dominique's younger sister, Sylvie Boissonnas -also an art collector and patron, who lives in Paris, ''My father was of Gide's atheist generation, and Dominique was very spiritual. 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. ''It's absolutely crazy what they did,'' says one New York dealer. It was inescapable. His interest in architecture, he says, comes from his father and from working with Charles Gwathmey, who designed his East Hampton house. Hickey-Robertson. [12] The de Menils filled their home with art and hosted many of the leading artists, scientists, civil rights activists, and intellectuals of the day. When John de Menil walked into Alexander Iolas Gallery in Paris one day in 1964, Jean Tinguely's moving, noisy sculptures stole part of . To supple-ment the scanty family income, John dropped out of school to work in a bank. [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. eastern air lines flight 401, ridges in cheeks after facelift, dirty weekend (2015 parents guide), does ipass work in michigan, charles smith obituary florida, rick lagina wife, dental faculty jobs in europe, yba best stands, pigeon meat for bell's palsy, emily lamont wedding, dylan weber actor family business age, kohler spark plug 2513219 cross reference to ngk, nello restaurant owner, west seattle explosion today, what happened to wolf winters,
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