Hidden in the middle of Houston`s Montrose district is a block-long building sided with gray clapboard. If it weren`t for the roof`s high-tech system of white ”leaves” that filter in sunlight, the building might be dismissed as a warehouse.
The bland exterior, blending in with the modest scale of the neighborhood, belies the importance of what`s inside. Designed by Italian architect Renzo Piano, the building holds the multimillion-dollar art collection of Dominique de Menil and her late husband, John de Menil.
The June 7 public opening of the Menil Collection (the ”de” dropped for simplicity`s sake) has been eagerly anticipated by the art world. ”Without a doubt, it`s one of the most remarkable private collections assembled in this century,” says Richard Koshalek, director of Los Angeles` Museum of Contem-porary Art.
To a city in the grip of a stubborn recession, the new museum is a source of pride. Dominique de Menil could have donated her holdings to a museum in New York or her native France, but she chose to keep it in her adopted city, Houston.
New York dealer Leo Castelli, calling the collection ”very significant internationally,” says he wasn`t surprised de Menil located it in Houston.
”She has a wonderful townhouse in New York, but her real habitat is in Houston. It`s the place she and her late husband lived and worked for many, many years.”
At 79, ”she looks a bit fragile,” he adds, ”but in her fragility, there`s beauty and a wonderful human being. If people still have souls these days, she truly has one.”
Reportedly worth $150 million to $175 million, the collection`s strengths are in modern art, antiquities, Byzantine works and the arts of tribal cultures. Surrealism, particularly the work of Max Ernst and Rene Magritte, forms a renowned part of the museum, says Walter Hopps, director of the Menil Collection.
Dominique and John de Menil were French emigrees who fled to America during World War II. As Nazi Germany occupied France, the de Menils moved to Houston, as did Schlumberger, Ltd., the company founded by her father and uncle, Conrad and Marcel Schlumberger.
The Schlumberger brothers invented a well-logging device that become indispensable to global oil exploration. It also provided the de Menils with a fortune.
Dominique de Menil`s hard-working, Protestant father didn`t allow her to spend money on paintings, which he considered luxuries. But when she was persuaded to buy a Fernand Leger for $500, she has said, ”That was the end of my Puritan upbringing.”
She converted to Catholicism to marry John de Menil. On one of his business trips to New York City, he met Father Marie-Alain Couturier, a Dominican priest who introduced the couple to modern art. The de Menils`
tastes also were shaped by art dealer Alexandre Iolas, an expert on Surrealism, and by Jermayne MacAgy, an innovative museum director.
Schlumberger`s rapid growth enabled the de Menils to increase their art purchases. During five decades, they acquired 10,000 art objects, dating from Paleolithic times to the present. Half of the collection comprises prints, photographs and rare books.
While many of their wealthy peers played it safe by buying pricey Impressionist canvases, the de Menils bought avant-garde works by Jasper Johns, Andy Warhol and Mark Rothko before the painters became widely acclaimed. They also embraced the early work of architect Philip Johnson, allowing him to design their modern, flat-roofed home in River Oaks, a Houston neighborhood dominated by antebellum mansions.
Despite generous gifts to a range of Houston museums and schools, the de Menils` uncompromising tastes in art, architecture and politics often put them at odds with Houston`s conservative establishment. John de Menil openly supported liberal causes with fervor until his death in 1973.
Overall, however, the de Menil vision has become much less controversial through the years. While the art collection is being universally hailed, some complain the building is dull. One renowned New York architect, who asked to remain anonymous, said he declined an offer from de Menil ”because I didn`t want to design a warehouse.”
But Richard Stout, a Texas painter who has had his canvases exhibited in his home state, New York and Germany, defends Piano`s design as not being an
”ego trip” like the Guggenheim. ”And it`s not another `box,` ” he adds.
”The roof, the sky, the landscape, in some way penetrate and humanize the experience inside.”
Renzo Piano–who, with Richard Rogers, designed Paris` Centre Pompidou
–came up with a simple plan to hold the collection. The galleries, situated on the ground floor, have white walls that seem to float just slightly above where they meet the dark wood floors. Sunlight is filtered through a special glass that blocks ultraviolet rays and permits only a fraction of available sunlight into the galleries.
On the second floor is the Treasure House, a series of rooms storing the bulk of the collection. While other institutions don`t allow people to look at art in storage, scholars will be admitted into these rooms, making the entire col-lection accessible.
The building`s simple design reflects Dominique de Menil`s personality. Though a rich woman (Fortune put her net worth in the $200 million range), she has never indulged in the splashy displays of wealth that are typically Texan. One much-told tale is that she has been seen, on occasion, wearing her fur coat inside-out. Piano`s design, like de Menil herself, is less concerned with outward superficialities than with the interior.
The opening of the Menil Collection has been delayed twice, but many believe it`s not for financial reasons but because de Menil is a perfectionist who wants to make sure everything runs smoothly.
Despite her passion for art, de Menil has never felt comfortable calling herself a ”collector.” She insisted the building be nonmonumental in scale and blend into the middle-class neighborhood. Eschewing the institutional label of ”museum,” she preferred the simple title ”The Menil Collection.” She also avoids speaking to the press.
But some have asked that if she`s a selfless ”art nun,” as Vanity Fair quipped earlier this year, why didn`t she donate her collection to an existing museum?
”It`s not that she`s not supportive of other museums,” says Elizabeth Glassman, who formerly worked with the Menil Foundation and is now a partner with the art consulting firm of Glassman & Lorenzo. ”She`s given the Museum of Fine Arts some of its finest pieces, and she`s given art to the Pompidou in France. I think it`s just personality. She has very specific and avant-garde ways of viewing what a museum should be. She doesn`t want to make art a boring experience.”
Giving up the collection to an existing institution would also risk its being dismantled. ”The Menil Collection has been selected with one eye, at most two–she and her husband,” says Stout. ”This is unique in the world. Other large collections in Europe are not picked as selectively, with an eye for the interdependence of objects.”
