The Menil Collection Opens “The Space Between Looking and Loving: Francesca Fuchs and the de Menil House”

Exhibition presents the artist’s response to an unexpected familial connection to the museum and studied reflection on the de Menils’s home in Houston

The Menil Collection will open The Space Between Looking and Loving: Francesca Fuchs and the de Menil House on May 23, 2025.

On view through November 2, 2025, Houston artist Francesca Fuchs’s exhibition will feature new paintings inspired by an unexpected connection with a second-century Roman sculpture of a male torso in the museum’s collection. Presented with keepsakes remade from her childhood, rarely seen photographs of the de Menil house, and artworks and archival material from the museum, Fuchs’s sketches and paintings explore the histories of objects John and Dominique de Menil collected and displayed in their Houston home.

In 1970, John de Menil wrote to German classical archeologist Dr. Werner Fuchs (1927–2016) seeking to identify the subject of a Roman male torso in his collection. Was it a statue of Apollo or Dionysus? Forty-nine years later, Fuchs’s discovery of black-and-white photographs
depicting the marble torso in her father’s personal effects in Oxford, England, prompted the artist to find the original letter in the Menil archives. The Space Between Looking and Loving is the artist’s response to John’s unanswered letter, which will be on display in this presentation.

Francesca Fuchs said, “I make my work thinking about the significance of objects, making paintings of paintings, and paintings of objects I live with and love, trying to up-end hierarchies from within the intimacies of domestic space. The Space Between Looking and Loving is
consistent with my years-long engagement with the deeply personal and my profound belief in the power of the intimate and every day. With this exhibition, I’ve shifted this wonder to the things that John and Dominique de Menil lived with, and to the existence of the letter John de Menil wrote to my father more than five decades ago.”

After John and Dominique de Menil moved from France to the United States during World War II, they chose to make Houston their permanent residence. The modern house the couple commissioned from architect Philip Johnson in the late 1940s soon became an intimate place activated by their disparate collecting interests, exhibition and educational projects, and philanthropic initiatives.

The de Menil house became a point of reference and investigation for the artist in the development of this show. Fuchs researched hundreds of photographs taken between the 1950s and late 1990s—a period bookended by the de Menils moving into their new house and the death of Dominique de Menil.

Paul R. Davis, Curator of Collections, The Menil Collection, said, “It’s been a joy to collaborate with Francesca on this research project and exhibition. Developed from the most serendipitous historical kernel, Francesca’s sincere and inspired approach to researching the de Menil house and permanent collection has generated a refreshingly original and rich perspective on the lives of objects collected by John and Dominique de Menil. Her enduring pursuit of painting compels us to think about the layered and fungible meanings of everyday objects.”

Related Programs:

-Curator Talk: Paul Davis on “The Space Between Looking and Loving: Francesca Fuchs and the de Menil House” on Sunday, Aug. 17, 3 p.m.
-Panel Discussion: A Conversation on the de Menil Home on Thursday, Sept. 11, 7 p.m.
-Artist Talk: Francesca Fuchs on Thursday, Oct. 9, 7 p.m.

Menil programs are free and open to everyone. Learn more at menil.org/events.