When he was director of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Henry T. Hopkins gave the green light to the first major retrospective of Ed Ruscha's paintings. The show, which traveled the U.S. and Canada in 1982 and 1983, was instrumental in securing Ruscha's reputation as a critically important artist — both for Los Angeles, where he began to attract attention as a promising newcomer around 1959, and for a 1980s art world that was just on the cusp of going global.
Hopkins, who died over the weekend at 81, was instrumental in developing L.A.'s art scene. As an educator and a museum director, he was around in the 1960s as the cultural scene began to take off and again after 1986, when he returned from museum jobs in Texas and the Bay Area and L.A. became a powerhouse.
Among my favorite Hopkins stories is a rather harrowing one that concerns Ruscha. Hopkins bought one of the artist's first word-paintings not long after it was made, a transitional 1959 canvas called “Sweetwater.” He paid $200, arranging a $10-a-month payment plan with the young, then-little-known painter…..
– Christopher Knight
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Henry T. Hopkins dies at 81; painter and museum director had formative role in L.A. art scene
Photo: Henry T. Hopkins with two Ed Ruscha paintings in the background. Credit: Los Angeles Times
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Henry Hopkins and the ‘lost’ Ed Ruscha
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