Dominique de Menil

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Dominique de Menil (1908 – 1997) was an American heiress to the Schlumberger Limited oil-equipment fortune, and well known for being devoted to art and civil rights.

Immigrants from Paris to New York, for over forty years the De Menils collected some 10,000 objects. The Menil Collection includes primitive and tribal African Art, Surrealist pieces from modern Europe and the Mediterranean, as well as the work of a number of contemporary American artists, in particular that of abstract expressionists Jackson Pollock, Barnett Newman, Clyfford Still, Robert Motherwell, Willem de Kooning and Mark Rothko, whose self-described "religious" and "meditative" paintings provided the inspiration for the De Menil’s ecumenical chapel.

She spearheaded annual gifts to recipients of the Rothko Chapel Awards honoring individual efforts on behalf of human rights. Every two years she offered an award named for murdered El Salvadoran Catholic Bishop Óscar Romero. She also founded the Byzantine Fresco Chapel Museum in Houston. The museum, designed by her son architect Francois de Menil, houses 13th century Byzantine murals from Lysi, Cyprus.

Her daughter Christophe married scholar Robert Thurman, and their grandson is artist Dash Snow.

Her final project was a commission of three site-specific light installations by Dan Flavin for Richmond Hall, a former Weingarten's grocery store on Richmond Ave. in Houston, Texas in 1996. She died at Houston, Texas, on 31st December 1997.