HOUSTON, TX.- Now on view at the Menil Collection is The Space Between Looking and Loving: Francesca Fuchs and the de Menil House, open through November 2, 2025. Houston-based artist Francesca Fuchs’s exhibition features new paintings inspired by an unexpected connection with a 2nd-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 is on display in this presentation. The exhibition gallery guide includes a written response from Fuchs.

Fuchs’s methodical approach to repainting provides an opportunity to consider both the representation of an object’s foundational truth and the artist’s personal devotion to the power of the painted image—a generative space between looking and loving. Reflecting on the biographies of objects, the plasticity of memory, and the fidelity of reproductions, Fuchs evokes the meaningful relationships between people and the objects with which they live. A unique and poetic perspective on works from the museum’s permanent collection, Fuchs’s first exhibition at the Menil generates new insights on the history of the de Menil house and its significant role in the design and curation of the main museum building, designed by Renzo Piano.

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. The artist studied how artworks moved through the interior spaces and noticed that certain works such as Wols’ painting It’s All Over, 1946; a 14th-century French statue of the Virgin and Child; and a marble statue of Aphrodite or Venus, routinely appeared in the photographs. The constant presence of these and other objects in the home suggests the deep connections the de Menils had to them, one that mirrors Fuchs’s studied remaking of objects through painting.

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.”

Paintings excavating the histories of objects is a signature theme of Fuchs's iterative artistic practice. She invokes the originality of the object and questions where authenticity is located. By juxtaposing her paintings with artworks and archival materials from the museum, the artist addresses the tensions between the objective truth of representation and a subjective faith in memory.

The Space Between Looking and Loving: Francesca Fuchs and the de Menil House is curated by Paul R. Davis, Curator of Collections, The Menil Collection.

Born in London and raised in Münster, Germany, Francesca Fuchs moved to Houston in 1996 as a fellow for the Core Program at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. During her thirty-year career in Houston and internationally, Fuchs’s work has been a process of honing extended reflections on the nature of everyday objects and illuminating their fundamental truths. Her portraits of objects are re-paintings of paintings, prints, photographs that resist and reconsider their accepted signals of cultural importance, particularly as they relate to the intimacies of life. Fuchs’s work has been included in exhibitions organized by the Institute of Contemporary Art, London; The Whitechapel Art Gallery, London; The Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth; Contemporary Arts Museum Houston; Art Museum of Southeast Texas, Beaumont; The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; The Suburban, Oak Park, Illinois. In 2018, Art League Houston recognized Fuchs as Texas Artist of the Year.