Christopher Knight Walter Hopps [1932-2005] Curator Brought Fame to Postwar L.A. Artists, Los Angeles Times, 22/3/05, pp. A1, A19
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Hopps' first exhibition, organized with his first wife, Shirley, in 1954, was itself unorthodox. Dubbed the Merry-Go-round Show, it arose from his concern that a new generation of Abstract Expressionist painters was not being seen in L.A. Hopps rented the merry-go-round at the Santa Monica Pier for $80, stretched tarp around the poles and hung nearly 100 paintings by 40 artists, incuding Richard Diebenkorn, Mark Rothko, Clyfford Still and Jay De Feo. All were for sale, none sold for more than $300. Nothing sold.
Hopps and his wife regularly held informal exhibitions in their Brentwood apartment, where occasional sales helped keep them afloat. He briefly operated a galllery housed in a small structure built from used telephone poles. Called Syndell Studios, it was named in memory of a farmer who was killed in a freak accident while Hopps was driving cross-country. At Syndell Studos, Hopps showed the seminal Beat generation artist, Wallace Berman, and he met Herms.
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