Dominique de Menil - Early Life

Early Life

Dominique de Menil was born Dominique Isaline Zelia Henriette Clarisse Schlumberger, the daughter of Conrad and Louise Delpech Schlumberger. She studied physics and mathematics at the Sorbonne and developed an interest in filmmaking, which took her to Berlin to serve as script assistant on the Josef von Sternberg production of The Blue Angel. She also published articles on film technology in the French journal La revue du cinéma.

In 1930 she met the banker Jean de Menil (who later anglicized his name to John), and they were married the next year. Raised a Protestant, Dominique converted to Roman Catholicism in 1932. The de Menils' Catholic faith, especially their interest in Father Yves Marie Joseph Congar's teachings on ecumenism, would become crucial to the development of their collecting ethos in the coming decades. They had five children: Marie-Christophe (who was married to Robert Thurman and the grandmother of artist Dash Snow), Adelaide (a photographer who is married to anthropologist Edmund Snow Carpenter), Georges (an economist), Francois (a filmmaker and architect), and Philippa (co-founder of the Dia Art Foundation).

Following the outbreak of World War II and the Nazi occupation of France, the de Menils emigrated from Paris to the United States of America. They maintained residences in New York and France but settled in Houston, where John 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.