Artists We've Known

An eclectic selection of twentieth-century artwork from the collection of legendary curator and museum director Walter Hopps, some with personal reminiscences by the artists themselves

Over a fifty-year career that included stints at the famed Ferus Gallery in Los Angeles and as director of the Pasadena Art Museum (now Norton Simon Museum), the Corcoran Gallery, and as founding director of the Menil Collection, the legendary curator Walter Hopps (1932–2005) established himself as a voracious and eclectic collector of twentieth-century art. Hopps together with his wife Caroline Huber—also a curator, as well as an artist—assembled an adventurous and diverse collection of art, a large portion of which has been donated or promised to the Menil Collection. Featuring sculpture and photography as well as drawings and paintings, and including work by Christo, Linda Connor, Beauford Delaney, Anne Doran, Marcel Duchamp, Walker Evans, Robert Rauschenberg, Ed Ruscha, and Niki de Saint Phalle, to name a few, this book reveals the personal choices of two fine curatorial minds. Many of the more than fifty works illustrated have a story—often marvelous, sometimes humorous, and in several cases in the artist’s own words—of how they came to be in the collection. The publication also highlights artists not often featured in print, such as John Altoon, James Bettison, Mark Flood, and Sonia Gechtoff. Candid photos also highlight some of interactions between Hopps, Huber, and the artists from 1957 to 2001.