CAMBRIDGE, MASS.- The Harvard Art Museums announced the appointment of Edouard Kopp as the Maida and George Abrams Associate Curator of Drawings in the museums’ Division of European and American Art.
Kopp comes to the museums from the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, where he was associate curator of drawings and was responsible for French and later Germanic drawings. At the Getty, Kopp organized exhibitions devoted to French landscape, Germanic drawings, the artist Gustav Klimt, and 18th-century French drawings from Los Angeles collections. He has recently co-curated two international loan shows: The Work of Nature: The Landscapes of Théodore Rousseau, which will be displayed at the Getty and the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek in Copenhagen, in 2016–17; and an exhibition focused on the sculptor and draftsman Edme Bouchardon, which will be on view at the Musée du Louvre and the Getty in 2016–17.
Kopp has published widely on the drawings of French sculptor Edme Bouchardon, and on the 18thcentury French collector Pierre-Jean Mariette, in journals such as Master Drawings and The Burlington Magazine. He has contributed to exhibition catalogues on French prints from the age of Louis XIV, Edgar Degas and his method, and French landscapes, and he is co-author of the forthcoming catalogues for the Théodore Rousseau and Edme Bouchardon exhibitions described above. He is currently revising his doctoral dissertation for publication by Getty Publications in 2016.
In his role at the Harvard Art Museums, Kopp will oversee the museums’ collection of drawings dating from before the 20th century. This collection is considered to be the finest and most comprehensive of any university art museum in the United States, and ranks among the most important public collections in the country. He will be actively engaged in the development of exhibitions, public lectures, and other programming, and will play an integral role in the regular rotation of works on paper within many of the museums’ galleries. He is also responsible for the stewardship of the drawings collection, including identifying key works for acquisition.
“We are thrilled to welcome such an accomplished scholar and art historian to the Harvard Art Museums,” said Ethan Lasser, interim head of the Division of European and American Art, and the Margaret S. Winthrop Associate Curator of American Art. “Edouard brings a fresh perspective and rigorous eye to the storied collection of drawings, and his enthusiasm will engage audiences across the University and visitors from around the world.”
“I am thrilled to have the invaluable opportunity to work with one of the finest drawings collections in the United States—and especially to do so within the unique and stimulating context of a university art museum,” said Kopp. “This is a living collection at a major institution with a strong tradition of encouraging firsthand, up-close study of original works of art. I look forward to interacting with students, faculty, and the wider community of scholars, collectors, and art lovers.”
Before his time at the Getty, Kopp worked as a researcher for the Weiss Gallery in London, and also for Waddeson Manor, a National Trust estate in Buckinghamshire, England. He served as a teaching assistant while a graduate student at the Courtauld Institute of Art in London, where he received his Ph.D. with a dissertation entitled “Edme Bouchardon: Learned Draughtsman of the Eighteenth Century (1698–1762).” He has a master’s degree in modern art, also from the Courtauld, and wrote his thesis on the Austrian graphic artist Alfred Kubin (1877–1959). He also holds a master of science in management from the Grenoble Graduate School of Business.
The Harvard Art Museums’ collection of approximately 12,000 drawings (from before the year 1900) includes major masterpieces from American and principal European schools. Among the strengths are 17th- and early 19th-century French works, including the most extensive holding of drawings by Ingres, Géricault, and David outside of France. The collection also excels in Italian Renaissance works by Carpaccio, Perugino, and Michelangelo, among others. Works by German and Netherlandish masters such as Dürer, Holbein, Bruegel, and Rembrandt are well represented, as are 19th-century British works by Blake, Beardsley, and the Pre-Raphaelites. In the American school, the collection includes more than 20 Homer watercolors, drawings and pastels by Whistler, and an incomparable grouping of more than 500 drawings and sketches by Sargent.
