They had agreed to keep the collection together rather than donating it piecemeal to various existing institutions. By 1973, when John de Menil died, the pair had amassed over 10,000 works of art and had been considering the disposition of this immense legacy. This device was marketed throughout the world beginning in 1927 by the Schlumberger companies and provided the basis for Dominique de Menil's personal fortune, which was estimated in 1989 at over $100 million. Menil's father that could identify minerals and fluids based on their degree of resistance to electrical current. During this time, they continued to collect on their own, backed by the profits from a device invented by Mrs. Together they formed the innovative Art Investments, Ltd., which involved twelve local business people as limited partners in the purchase and rotation of modern art works among the homes of the participants. They were involved in projects as diverse as the Black Art Center in the Fifth Ward, the "Art Barn" and Media Center at Rice, and the Rothko Chapel, their first independent project. The Menils quickly became a force in the local artistic community, serving as patrons to the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, the Contemporary Arts Museum, and the art departments of the University of St. In the late 1940s they commissioned Philip Johnson to design the River Oaks house in which Mrs. They moved to Houston in 1941 John de Menil was head of Schlumberger's Houston office. The Menil family left France when it was occupied by the Germans in World War II. They were introduced to the world of contemporary art by Dominican priest Father Marie-Alain Couturier, the force behind the innovative collaboration between the Catholic Church and modern masters such as Matisse, Picasso, Leger, and Le Corbusier in the chapels at Assy, Ronchamp, and Vence in France. She and her husband John began to amass their uniquely personal art collection in Europe in 1931, shortly after they were married. Dominique Schlumberger de Menil was born in France in 1908, daughter of Conrad Schlumberger, one of the founders of Schlumberger, an oil-drilling equipment company. The museum, which opened to the public on June 7, 1987, also hosts special exhibits, which include works on loan from other collections. The Menil Collection in Houston displays the vast art collection of its founders, Dominique and John de Menil.
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