John de Menil

John de Ménil (January 4, 1904 – June 1, 1973) was a Franco-American businessman, philanthropist, and art patron. He was the founding president of the International Foundation for Art Research (IFAR) in New York. With his wife, Dominique de Menil, he established the Menil Collection, a free museum designed by Renzo Piano and built in 1986 to preserve and exhibit their world-class contemporary art collection.

De Ménil was born Baron Jean Marie Joseph Menu de Ménil in Paris. After emigrating to the United States during World War II, he began using the name 'John Menu de Ménil' which is an anglicized version of 'Jean Menu de Ménil'. Over time he stopped using the 'Menu' portion of his surname and began using shortened forms of the surname such as 'de Ménil' or 'Deménil'. John's children also usually spell their surname as 'de Ménil' (sometimes they use the form 'Deménil'). After becoming a U. S. citizen in 1962, de Ménil officially changed his first name from 'Jean' to 'John'.

De Ménil was a son of Baron Georges-Auguste-Emmanuel Menu de Ménil (April 20, 1863 – 1947) and Marie-Madeleine Rougier (1866 – 1929). The Menu de Ménil family was a French Catholic family, many of whose men had been officers in the French military. The title of Baron, which de Ménil inherited from his father, had been bestowed on John's great-great-grandfather Paul-Alexis-Joseph Menu de Ménil (July 17, 1764 – December 30, 1834) on September 11, 1813 by Napoleon Bonaparte – thus making him a 'baron de l'Empire'.

In the 1920s de Ménil earned a degree in political science from Sciences Po (Institut d'Etudes Politiques de Paris) and a degree in law from the Faculté de droit de l'Université de Paris.

In 1930, de Ménil met French heiress Dominique Schlumberger, whom he married on May 9, 1931. They had five children. Although the full surname of these children actually is 'Menu de Ménil', in practice they all use the shortened anglicized spelling 'de Ménil' (or sometimes 'Deménil') instead, so that is what is given here:

In the early years of his marriage de Ménil was a banker, serving as vice-president (1932–1938) of the Banque Nationale pour le Commerce et l'Industrie in Paris. Following the outbreak of World War II and the Nazi occupation of France, the de Ménils emigrated from Paris to the United States. They maintained residences in New York City and France but settled in Houston, Texas, where de Ménil 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.

John and Dominique de Ménil began collecting art intensively in the 1940s, beginning with a purchase of Paul Cézanne's 1895 painting Montagne (Mountain) in 1945. The de Ménils' Catholic faith, especially their interest in Father Yves Marie Joseph Congar's teachings on ecumenism, would become crucial in the development of their collecting ethos in the coming decades. With the guidance of the Dominican priest Marie-Alain Couturier, who introduced the de Ménils to the work of artists in galleries and museums in New York, they became interested in the intersection of modern art and spirituality. They ultimately amassed more than 17,000 paintings, sculptures, decorative objects, prints, drawings, photographs, and rare books.

The de Ménils 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. By the 1960s the de Menils had gravitated toward the major American post-war movements of Abstract expressionism, Pop art, and Minimalism. 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, René Magritte, Robert Rauschenberg, Dorothea Tanning, and Andy Warhol.