Dominique de Menil

Dominique de Menil, heir to the Schlumberger oilfield services fortune, collected with her husband John everything from Surrealism to Byzantine icons and African art, and in Houston commissioned the Rothko Chapel. The Menil Collection, in a Renzo Piano building that opened in 1987, has always been free, and shows only a fraction of its holdings at a time in quiet, daylit rooms set in a neighbourhood of bungalows.