Houston art patrons donate vast collection of drawings to Menil The gift includes work by luminaries Jasper Johns and Jackson Pollock

Selected Images from the Promised Gift of Louisa Stude Sarofim and Janie C. Lee to The Menil Collection: Ellsworth Kelly, Self Portrait, 1948 Selected Images from the Promised Gift of Louisa Stude Sarofim and Janie C. Lee to The Menil Collection: Ellsworth Kelly, Self Portrait, 1948 Photo: The Menil Collection Photo: The Menil Collection Image 1 of / 24 Caption Close Houston art patrons donate vast collection of drawings to Menil 1 / 24 Back to Gallery

Louisa Stude Sarofim and Janie C. Lee appreciated the value of drawing decades before many people considered that kind of work integral to an artist's creative thinking, much less a medium worthy of its own museum.

For 40 years or more, Sarofim and Lee have filled the walls of their respective homes with drawn masterpieces by the megastars of modern and contemporary art, amassing collections worth millions of dollars.

But both are from prominent Houston families who consider arts patronage as much of a civic duty as paying taxes, and they shared their passion for drawing with the city's ultimate arts patron, Menil Collection founder Dominique de Menil.

On Thursday, they announced a gift the Menil's patron saint would have appreciated, and perhaps expected: Sarofim and Lee have promised a total of 110 seminal drawings from their independent collections to the Menil. Each has committed 55 drawings -- an unusual two-part gift that constitutes one of the largest donations in the museum's history.

The donation includes work by Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning and Robert Rauschenberg, as well as 15 works by Jasper Johns that will make the Menil the most significant public repository of the 86-year old artist's drawings, representing every decade of his career.

At HoustonChronicle.com Molly Glentzer writes about how donations like this are becoming more necesssary in the arts world.