Hoopes, Donelson F. 1932–2006

(Donelson Farquhar Hoopes)

OBITUARY NOTICE—See index for CA sketch: Born December 3, 1932, in Philadelphia, PA; died of complications from a stroke, February 22, 2006, in Bangor, ME. Museum curator and author. A scholar of nineteenth-century American painters, Hoopes held curatorial positions at several museums around the country. He attended the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts for three years before enlisting in the U.S. Army in 1953. Hoopes then left the service in 1955, attended the University of Florence for a year, and completed a bachelor's degree at the University of Pennsylvania in 1960. Immediately out of college he was made director of the Portland Museum of Art in Maine and, two years later, was named curator of the Corcoran Gallery of Art at the nation's capital. Hoopes moved from museum to museum over the years, including the Brooklyn Museum in the late 1960s and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in the early 1970s. During the 1960s and 1970s, he also was a consultant to various organizations, such as the New York State Council for the Arts, the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, and the Archives of American Art. From 1977 to 1982, he was on the Committee for the Preservation of the White House, which helped select artworks for the White House collection. Finally, from 1983 to 1997, Hoopes was director of the Thomas Cole Foundation in Catskill, New York, which worked to restore the nineteenth-century artist's home. Between and during these various jobs, Hoopes produced several works about painters, often on his favorite subject of watercolor, which he considered a distinctly American medium. Among his books are Winslow Homer Watercolors (1969), American Watercolor Painting (1977), and Henry Casselli: Master of the American Watercolor (2000).

OBITUARIES AND OTHER SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

New York Times, March 21, 2006, p. A21.

Washington Post, March 13, 2006, p. B4.