Houston’s Menil Museum Opens Endowment Drive

In the face of financial woes, Houston’s esteemed Menil Collection, a museum housing one of the country’s finest private art collections, has disclosed a $35-million endowment campaign.

Without an endowment, the museum eventually would have to close its doors, said Dominique de Menil, the museum’s founder and chief patron.

So far, about $26 million toward the endowment has been raised, she said--including her own $17.5 million gift.

The 2-year-old museum, containing 10,000 objects from ancient to contemporary times assembled over 40 years by De Menil and her late husband, John, is governed by the Menil Foundation, which the couple established in the 1950s. The foundation has been the sole supplier of the museum’s acquisition allowance, which until this year totaled about $1 million annually, and its annual operating funds of between $2.7 and $2.9 million.

“I don’t have enough, and the foundation doesn’t have enough money” even for operating expenses, De Menil told The Times this week. “I could do it for a couple of years, but then I’d be completely broke and the Menil Foundation would be broke.”

The foundation is based mostly on stocks of Schlumberger Ltd., a huge oil field services organization founded by Dominique de Menil’s father and uncle. It, like other Houston ventures, has reportedly suffered because of the oil recession.

Administrators at the museum, revered particularly for its exceptionally strong holdings of 20th-Century art, have spent nothing on acquisitions since 1988, according to former director Walter Hopps. He recently resigned from the museum in the midst of the money troubles to “pursue an independent curatorial role” involving 20th-Century art projects.