Walter Hopps

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Walter Hopps (born May 3, 1932 in Glendale , † March 20, 2005 in Los Angeles) was an American museum director and curator for contemporary art .

Live and act

Hopps came from a family of doctors and was studying microbiology at UCLA when he opened his first art gallery. As a student at Eagle Rock High School , he had got to know Walter and Louise Arensberg's home in Hollywood, and he kept visiting this collection of radical European modern art. As a student he was also enthusiastic about music and organized jazz concerts with his fellow students Jimm Newman (later also a gallery owner) and the later abstract painter Craig Kauffman.

With his first wife Shirley Neilsen and the poet Ben Bartosh, he opened the rather private gallery Syndell Studio in Brentwood , West Los Angeles . His group shows of California artists, Action in May 1955 at Santa Monica Pier with jazz music, and Action 2 a year later at the Turnabout Theater on La Cienega Boulevard in West Hollywood attracted attention.

In 1957 he founded the Ferus Gallery in Los Angeles, which he ran with Edward Kienholz and then with Irving Blum as partners. The Ferus artists initially only included artists from San Francisco and Los Angeles, Wallace Berman and his Semina project, Billy Al Bengston , Clyfford Still , Richard Diebenkorn , Llyn Foulkes , Larry Bell , Ed Ruscha , Bruce Conner , Ken Price and Robert Irwin . The 14 New York Artists Show (1960) indicated a new orientation for the gallery. The successful commercial artist Andy Warhol received his first solo exhibition as an artist here in 1962. Hopps became a curator in 1962 and in 1964, at the age of 31, director of the Pasadena Art Museum (since 1969 the Norton Simon Museum ) and organized large retrospectives by Kurt Schwitters , Joseph Cornell and Marcel Duchamp , the first major museum exhibitions of these artists in the United States of America . In 1962, with New Painting of Common Objects, he offered the first overview of the new American Pop Art in a museum.

Hopps' leadership style led to his dismissal in 1967, and he took over the management of the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, DC He selected the American participants in the 1972 Venice Biennale (he had the American participants in the 1965 São Paulo) and in the same year became curator for 20th century American art at the Smithsonian American Art Museum . He organized a major Robert Rauschenberg retrospective there in 1976 . In 1979 he became a consultant and 1980 director of the Menil Foundation in Houston , Texas . From 1987 to 1989 he was the founding director of the Menil Collection , the foundation's museum, two years later only responsible for the art of the 20th century. The Menil featured Yves Klein , John Chamberlain , Andy Warhol and Max Ernst . In 1996 Hopps organized the Kienholz retrospective at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, 1997, with Susan Davidson, another large Rauschenberg exhibition at the Guggenheim Museum and in Houston, and in 2003 with Sarah Bancroft the James Rosenquist retrospective at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, where he received an additional curatorial position in 2002. The last exhibition he organized was that of an old friend, George Herms: Hot Set , at the Santa Monica Art Museum .

The Menil Foundation created the Walter Hopps Award for Outstanding Curatorial Achievement in 2001 with a purse of $ 15,000. The first winners were Roger M. Buergel , Hamza Walker , Eungie Joo , Maria Lind and Adam Szymczyk .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ The obituary in the Los Angeles Times names Glendale, East Coast newspapers and Wikipedia, the Eagle Rock district, Los Angeles, or simply Los Angeles.
  2. ↑ The Washington Post obituary focused on his personality, describing him as a genius, as a sort of a gonzo museum director - elusive, unpredictable, outlandish in his range, jagged in his vision, heedless of rules. Washington Post , March 22, 2005
  3. ↑ Shirley Neilsen Blum , Dictionary of Art Historians ( Memento of November 27, 2010 in the Internet Archive )
  4. ↑ From September 25 to October 19, 1962. The eight artists were Jim Dine , Robert Dowd , Joe Goode , Philip Hefferton , Roy Lichtenstein , Ed Ruscha, Wayne Thiebaud , Andy Warhol. Three works of each were shown.
  5. ^ Art In America , May, 2005 . His working hours are also given as a reason. From his superiors at the Smithsonian, Joshua C. Taylor, is this quip originate If I could find him, I'd fire him
  6. ^ Walter Hopps , obituary on warholstars.org
  7. ↑ Walter Hopps Award ( Memento from November 21, 2010 in the Internet Archive )
personal data
SURNAME Hops, Walter
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American museum director and curator
DATE OF BIRTH May 3, 1932
PLACE OF BIRTH Glendale (California)
DATE OF DEATH March 20, 2005
Place of death los Angeles