The Curatorial Imagination of Walter Hopps

“Once dubbed “the marvelous mad maven of modern art in America,” Walter Hopps (1932–2005) estimated that he had curated some 250 exhibitions in his fifty-plus-year-long career. Hopps’s impressive curatorial record constitutes the framework of The Curatorial Imagination of Walter Hopps, which features approximately sixty artists and more than 130 artworks, many of which are recent or promised gifts to the museum from Caroline Huber and the Estate of Walter Hopps. The show will explore the influential curatorial vision of Hopps, the Menil Collection’s Founding Director, as well as his distinctive approach to exhibition making, and appreciation for a variety of 20th-century art movements, featuring drawings, paintings, photography, and sculpture, ranging from the 1930s to the early 2000s.

A related publication, Artists We’ve Known: Selected Works from the Walter Hopps and Caroline Huber Collection, highlights 50 works from the couple’s personal collection. The book will be available for purchase at the Menil Bookstore and online.

The Curatorial Imagination of Walter Hopps is organized by Clare Elliott, Associate Research Curator.

Major funding for this exhibition is provided by Lea Weingarten. Additional support comes from Henrietta Alexander; Eddie and Chinhui Allen; Anne Levy Charitable Trust; Suzanne Deal Booth; Clare Casademont and Michael Metz; Angela and William Cannady; Hilda Curran; Barbara Davis; Janet and Paul Hobby; John R. Eckel, Jr. Foundation; Linda and George Kelly; Mary Hale Lovett McLean; Susan and Francois de Menil; Betty Moody; Carol and David Neuberger; Leslie and Shannon Sasser; Mark Wawro and Melanie Gray; Leslie Field and Morris Weiner; and the City of Houston through Houston Arts Alliance.”