Walter Hopps, the visionary Los Angeles art curator, founded the local Ferus Gallery and worked at the Pasadena Museum (now the Norton Simon Museum). Hopps (1932-2005) was a gifted raconteur beloved by non-verbal artists because he gave them a language to talk about their work. Deborah Treisman, now the fiction editor of the New Yorker, worked with him. She assembled and edited The Dream Colony: A Life in Art (Bloomsbury), a posthumous memoir that captures his dazzling verbal gifts. She discusses how Hopps ushered not only California artists but also Andy Warhol into visibility and recognition.
Read an excerpt from The Dream Colony.