Edouard Kopp, the gentleman drawing the Menil Collection in Houston

The new Institute of the Menil devoted to Drawing (Drawing Institute) is preparing to host, from 4 October (until 5 January 2020), an exhibition on the visionary French architect Jean-Jacques Lequeu.

More than fifty architectural and anatomical drawings, from the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, retrace the work of one of the most inventive post-revolutionary artists. This event was organized and thought by the new French Chief Curator Edouard Kopp. " My passion for art goes back to adolescence, I devoted my career to drawing, which is probably the most personal artistic practice, the most experimental and often the most revealing of Art He explains.

Young student at the Grenoble School of Management, he went on a university exchange for a year in England and enrolled as a free auditor in art classes in Warwick. He then plans to become an art dealer or join a large auction house as an expert. With his degree in his pocket, he decided to stay in London and enrolled at the Courteauld Institute, specialized in the study of art history, where he continued his research and obtained an internship at the painting department at the Getty. Museum. He realizes then that the job of museum curator is a very complete work, which allows to have a direct access to works of art, while being historian and in contact with the public. He perseveres, works a year in the painting department and makes the decision to present a thesis. For this, he chose to go on a new internship at the drawing department at the Harvard Art Museum. " The drawing speaks to me especially. For me it's an incredible technique. I have a visceral reaction. It moves me and stimulates me visually and intellectually "He says.

His memoir is about a French artist of the XVIII^e century, Bouchardon, and gives rise to an exhibition under the pyramid of the Louvre. He will be co-curator of the exhibition. At the same time, he obtained an assistant-curator position at the Getty Museum to take care of French drawing in Los Angeles. There are seven years left. Then, he became curator at the Harvard Museum where he oversaw more than 25,000 European and American drawings including works from the fourteenth century to 1900.

During his tenure, he enriched this collection with two major acquisitions: a collection of Flemish and Dutch drawings dating from the seventeenth century and the monumental drawings and collages of Kara Walker.

In Houston, he plans to expand the scope of the institute. He wants to make it an institution of international stature. He hopes to develop programs with Texas universities and open the institute to the general public through lectures and seminars. He also intends to contribute to the growth of the collection (about 2,000 works) and produce several publications to accompany the exhibitions. He also wants to organize two scholarship programs to support artists and researchers inspired by drawing. " I am very eager to work in Texas especially in Houston, a culturally rising and ambitious city. It is an honor to work in the first museum in the United States entirely designed to meet the specific needs of drawings and to make them known to a new levelHe says. Edouard Kopp traces his path.