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