![Sample our Humanities journals, sign in here to start your FREE access for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/5939/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Humanities.jpg"})
Abstract
Dominique de Menil (1908–1998) with her husband, Jean, amassed one of the finest collections of ancient and modern art in the United States. Rivaling the Frick Collection in New York City, their acquisitions are housed in a museum in midtown Houston; through their largesse, the Rothko Chapel for interfaith dialogue and a Byzantine Chapel stand nearby. Philanthropists, they supported the civil rights movement at home and peace initiatives abroad. They were committed to enrich Catholicism through theological inquiry and the arts. After Jean died, Dominique's willingness to listen to her inner voice prompted many contributions. The spiritual biography of Mrs. de Menil requires a theoretical lens not provided by existing constructs of spiritual development over the life course. Here, I deploy the metaphor of “landscapes” to illuminate critical moments in her spiritual growth, especially during her later years.
Notes
1 The classicus locus for Modernists was Wassily Kandinsky's Concerning the Spiritual in Art (1912, pp. 26, 75): “The spiritual life to which art belongs, and of which it is one of the mightiest agents, is a complex, but definite movement above and beyond … The artist must have something to communicate … [of] internal significance.”
de Menil, D. (1981a, October 21). Unpublished mss. to Your Royal Highness. Menil Archives.
de Menil, J. (1971, October). Unpublished note. Menil Archives.
Yale Art Gallery (2005). Label on Joseph Stella's Brooklyn Bridge.