The death of the heiress Christophe de Menil last summer seemed to come out of nowhere. For decades, she had been a towering, ubiquitous figure in the art world, a regal eccentric known for her white Eraserhead hair, colorful fashion, and crucial early support of work by Robert Wilson, Twyla Tharp, Trisha Brown, and her grandson Dash Snow, who died at 27 of a heroin overdose. Then, all of a sudden, her days of swanning about the gala circuit and her rollicking dinner parties uptown were over. The only explanation for her disappearance had surfaced a few years earlier in New York Supreme Court, where a friend and former assistant alleged Christophe’s estranged daughter, Taya Thurman, was responsible for keeping her trapped at home, surrounded by rotting food and inattentive caretakers.
The accusation seemed to tell just part of the story, and when reporter Annie Armstrong went looking for more answers, she uncovered other court documents that painted a far darker picture of Christophe’s reclusive final years. Among them is an affidavit by William Middleton, author of the definitive biography of Christophe’s parents, John and Dominique de Menil, alleging Taya and her son Max also isolated Christophe’s sister Adelaide and fired her longtime employees. “Their single-minded effort to get their hands on the fortunes of the two sisters [is among] the most shocking acts of elder abuse, family betrayal, and pure greed that I have ever witnessed,” Middleton wrote. Armstrong’s report, which appears in this year’s “Hamptons Issue” and includes interviews with Christophe’s intimate circle of friends, captures the tragic ending of a once-glamorous life and a complicated family that makes the Roys of Succession look like the Brady Bunch.
—Erik Maza, editor-at-large, New York
