The story
John and Dominique de Menil were oil-industry heirs who poured a fortune into modern art and civil-rights causes in Houston, and the museum they left is as particular as they were. They asked the Italian architect Renzo Piano, in his first American commission, for a building that looked like a modest bungalow from the street but opened into vast daylit galleries inside, the light softened by rows of curved concrete louvres overhead.
The collection leans toward Surrealism and the art that fed it, with Max Ernst and Magritte set beside African and Oceanic carvings and ancient antiquities. Admission has always been free.
A short walk away stands the Rothko Chapel, a bare octagonal room the couple commissioned, hung since 1971 with 14 dark, brooding canvases by Mark Rothko as a place for quiet.
