The Menil Collection

Housed in one of Renzo Piano’s earliest and most serene museum buildings, the Menil Collection opened in 1987 to exhibit the private collection of John and Dominique de Menil. The museum’s holdings, comprising approximately 17,000 pieces ranging from Byzantine icons to Surrealist paintings, are unified by the couple’s deep belief in the spiritual or transformational power of art. Thus, galleries of works by the likes of Duchamp, Warhol and Twombly are accompanied by such permanent exhibits as “Witnesses to a Surrealist Vision,” a display of the sort of anthropological objects and other curiosities that fascinated and inspired the Surrealists. Also on the Menil campus is the interfaith Rothko chapel, commissioned in 1971 and containing a suite of 14 canvases by Russian-born American painter Mark Rothko. In October 2017, the museum will also expand with the separate Menil Drawing Institute, the first freestanding facility dedicated solely to exhibiting modern and contemporary drawings.