A Few Interesting Facts About Houston

Who's Who in Houston

J. S. ABERCROMBIE: Abercrombie transformed a potential disaster for his small oilfield-drilling machine shop into a revolutionary invention and a multimillion-dollar company Cameron Iron Works in Houston. He helped found the Texas Childrens Hospital, for which he served as Chairman of the Board from its chartering in 1950 until his death in 1975. He also established the James S. Abercrombie Foundation, which at first benefited the hospital and the Texas Heart Institute. It is run today by Josephine Abercrombie and focuses on Education.

Monroe D. ANDERSON and William L. CLAYTON: cofounded Houston’s Anderson, Clayton and Co., which became the world’s largest cotton merchandiser at the time when cotton was king. Neither of them were native Houstonians, rather came from Mississippi. In 1947 Mr. Clayton set up the Clayton Fund: an organization that contributed to a variety of religious, charitable and educational institutions. Some of the recipients were Johns Hopkins University, Tufts University and the University of Texas. Mr. Anderson on the other hand established the M.D. Anderson Foundation in 1936. The initial fund was $ 300,000 and upon his death it received $ 19 million more. Today, it is known as the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center. Mr. Anderson died in 1939 at the age of 66. Mr. Clayton passed away in 1966.

George R. BROWN and Herman BROWN: Founders of the Houston based Brown & Root company, known today as Kellogg Brown and Root. Together with their wives the two gentlemen founded the Brown Foundation, which has granted more than $ 381 Million to charitable institutions, mainly in areas of education and the arts.

Hugh Roy CULLEN: was known as the “king of the wildcatters.” He once said that the trouble with oil business was that people expected to find oil on the surface. In 1947 he established the Cullen Foundation in Houston for the purpose of supporting education, medicine and charitable institutions. By 1955 he had reportedly given away 93% of an estimated $250 Million fortune to the University of Houston, Texas Medical Center, Baylor University College of Medicine, Texas Southern University, the Houston Symphony, Houston Museum of Fine Arts, the Boys Scouts and the YMCA.

Howard R. HUGHES, Jr.: left an indelible and distinctive mark on business before his death in 1976. He was the son of Hughes Tool Company, Houston, co-founded Howard Hughes Sr. He became a movie producer, but more importantly left important contributions to the Aviation Industry. He is recognized in the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum in Washington D.C. for setting an aircraft speed of 352 mph in 1935. He also worked with Lockheed Corporation to pioneer the Lockheed Constellation aircraft – on of the most important long-range airliners of the 1940s and 50s. The Howard Hughes Medical Institute, which the Billionaire founded in 1953, is one of the largest medical research endowments.

Jesse H. JONES: During the Roosevelt Administration, he was known as the second most powerful man. New Deal proponent and right-hand man to President Roosevelt, Jones was born in Tennessee. Raised by a widowed aunt, Jones settled in Dallas and started his working life at his uncle’s lumberyard. In Houston He started his own lumberyard and called it the South Texas Lumberyard Company. In 1933 President Roosevelt appointed him Reconstruction Finance Corporation to combat the effects of Depression. He rescued many a railroad, bank and factory from disaster. After serving as Secretary of Commerce, Jones returned to Houston in 1945 to resume both his business and philanthropic ventures. Houston Endowment, the largest local endowment, was established by Jones in 1937 and became the nation’s 15th largest by 1979. He passed away in 1956 after a brief illness.

George MITCHELL: Houston entrepreneur, developer he is a native of Galveston born to Greek immigrants. He founded the Mitchell Energy and Development Corporation, which today is one of the largest independent oil and gas producers in the state and one of the largest real estate developers in the Houston-Galveston area. In 1974 Mr. Mitchell open a master planned community for mixed income housing: The Woodlands. It is located north of Houston on 25000 acres and has received international acclaim for it’s planning, particularly in the area of ecology. Mr. Mitchell is the founder of HARC (Houston Advanced Research Center and Center for Global Studies. A contract and grant research institution headquartered in the Woodland’s Research Forest. HARC is a collaboration of 8 universities. Center for Global Studies sponsors conferences on environmental and growth issues and problems. They are the founders of the Mitchell Woods Pavilion.

Stewart MORRIS and Carloss MORRIS: They were brought up to work together in the Title Insurance company established by their grandfather. Together, they grew the Houston-based Stewart Title Company into one of the four largest title companies in the country.

Dominique SCHLUMBERGER de MENIL: Dominique Schlumberger de Menil was born in France in 1908, daughter of Conrad Schlumberger, one of the founders of Schlumberger,qv an oil-drilling equipment company. She and her husband John began to amass their uniquely personal art collection in Europe in 1931, shortly after they were married. 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. The Menil family left France when it was occupied by the Germans in World War II.qv They moved to Houston in 1941; John de Menil was head of Schlumberger's Houston office. In the late 1940s they commissioned Philip Johnson to design the River Oaks house in which Mrs. Menil still resided in the 1990s. 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,qqv and the art departments of the University of St. Thomas and Rice University. They were involved in projects as diverse as the Black Art Center in the Fifth Ward,qv the "Art Barn" and Media Center at Rice, and the Rothko Chapel,qv their first independent project. 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. During this time, they continued to collect on their own, backed by the profits from a device invented by Mrs. Menil's father that could identify minerals and fluids based on their degree of resistance to electrical current. 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. 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. They had agreed to keep the collection together rather than donating it piecemeal to various existing institutions. After her husband's death, Mrs. Menil continued to pursue their goal of preserving what she characterized as "the intimacy I had enjoyed with works of art." Encompassing a broad spectrum from the art of antiquity to that of tribal cultures and present-day Western art, the collection's overall theme, as she described it, is a spiritual one: the ephemeral nature of the human condition and man's continuing quest for transcendent meaning in that context. While the collection itself comprises almost exclusively art assembled by the Menils, the museum project was funded by a combination of major gifts from the Brown Foundation,qv the Cullen Foundation, the Hobby Foundation, Houston Endowment,qv and private contributions, in addition to the Menil Foundation's substantial support. Legal ownership of the building and the collection is vested in the Menil Foundation, a private nonprofit corporation, whose board of directors was headed in 1989 by Dominique de Menil. The museum was not initially given an operating and acquisition endowment. In 1989 this and the abrupt resignation of the museum's director caused temporary financial problems, which were solved by raising a $35 million endowment, $17.5 million donated by Mrs. Menil.

The Menil Collection contains works of art in four major areas. The art of antiquity is represented primarily by Cycladic and Celtic artifacts. Byzantine and Medieval icons dominate in the area of premodern Western religious art. The art of tribal cultures emphasizes African art but also includes superb examples of work from Oceania and the Pacific Northwest. The collection of twentieth century art focuses on Cubism, neoplastic abstraction, and surrealism. Over 1,000 examples of Max Ernst's oeuvre and some of Rene Magritte's most highly regarded paintings form an especially prominent part of this category. Recent American art from the 1950s to the 1970s is also represented. Throughout, the Menils' dedication to spirituality and humanism and an extraordinary eye for quality is in evidence. No more than 5 percent of the collection is on view at any one time, and it was one of Dominique de Menil's primary goals to rotate the works of art continually so that the public's experience in the museum would always be fresh. Selected exhibitions from the permanent collection include Near-Eastern and Mediterranean antiquities, Byzantine and medieval art, art of tribal cultures, European painting from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries, and twentieth-century European and American painting. Among the special exhibits in the main building in 1988 were John Chamberlain: Sculpture 1970s and 1980s, Andy Warhol Death and Disasters, Winslow Homer's Images of Blacks: The Civil War and Reconstruction Years, and Byzantine Icons from the Menil Collection. Richmond Hall, an alternative space located three blocks south of the collection, hosts performance art and site-specific works, such as Richard Jackson Installations 1970-1988. From 1989 to 1993 exhibits included works from Francisco Goya, Michael Tracy, Jacques Callot, John Chamberlain, and Jean-Michel Basquiat. Exhibitions in 1994 included Rolywholyover: A Circus and African Zion: The Sacred Art of Etuipia. The main museum building is on a tract of nine city blocks purchased by the Menils in the Montrose section of Houston. In accord with Mrs. Menil's desire for a building that was "small on the outside and big on the inside," the architectural firms of Renzo Piano of Genoa, Italy, and Houston-based Richard Fitzgerald and Partners produced an unassuming structure that blends well in style and exterior design with the gray bungalows that surround it. At forty feet by 142 feet and a maximum height of forty-five feet, the building dominates the neighborhood without overwhelming it, due in large part to its grey wood siding, white trim, and black canvas awnings. As befits the rationale of individually experienced art in a nonhierarchical setting, both exhibits and support facilities place heavy emphasis on a combination of sparseness and accessibility. The conservation department is on the first floor, and the storage facilities on the second floor are open by appointment. The bookstore and director's office are in bungalows nearby. Renzo Piano, perhaps best known for his high-tech Pompidou Center project in Paris, produced an equally innovative if less visually startling technical miracle for the Menil Collection. Working with engineer Peter Rice he achieved an interior illuminated by natural light that passes through glass and is deflected by a series of 300 ferro-cement "leaves," thus protecting the works of art from direct sunlight. A series of glass-enclosed interior gardens enhances the natural ambiance of the galleries. While the primary purpose of the Menil Collection is to provide personal access to its works of art, it also participates in the international art community by providing works on loan and exchange and contributes to the advancement of worldwide understanding among peoples of various cultures by supporting publications on art.