WILLIAM N. COPLEY et al.

William N. Copley’s Pasadena Incident, 1962, is currently on view at the Menil Collection in Houston. Copley created the work in response to an affair involving the Pasadena Health Department, who confiscated a collage by Copley from the exhibition Collage – Artists in California, curated by Walter Hopps at the Pasadena Art Museum in 1962. Speaking of the confiscated work – which featured paper lace and collaged syringes – Hopps later recalled: ‘Copley himself loved that this piece went to jail’. The artist commemorated the event by creating Pasadena Incident, a similar collaged object with tiny black bars across it. 

The Curatorial Imagination of Walter Hopps presents work by numerous artists who played a special role in Hopps’ life and which now comprise a remarkable gift of works to the Menil Collection.

The Menil Collection