arts & life

PHOTO BY ED LEDERMAN

architec ture

The Whitney Museum, a $422 million cantilevered building by Italian architect Renzo Piano

Built From Scratch

The director of New York’s Whitney Museum speaks about its architecture at the DIA.

Julie Edgar | Special to the Jewish News

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details

PHOTO BY MARCO ANELLI

The Coleman Mopper
Memorial Lecture,
co-sponsored by the
European Paintings Council
and the Visiting Committee
for European Sculpture and
Decorative Arts and titled
“An Idea Not a Building,” will
be held at 6:30 p.m.
Thursday, April 7, at the
Detroit Institute of Arts. A
reception in Kresge Court
will precede the lecture at
5:30 p.m. The event is free
with museum admission.
Use the John R entrance. For
reservations, call (313)
833-4005 or visit dia.org.

Adam Weinberg

50 March 31 • 2016

he director of the Whitney
Museum of American Art
in New York — which
moved into its new home with well-
deserved fanfare last spring — will
be in town April 7 to talk about
how the design of the new museum
expresses its ethos and aspirations.
Adam Weinberg is this year’s
Coleman Mopper Memorial
Lecture speaker at the Detroit
Institute of Arts. He’ll connect
the conceptual dots between the
Renzo Piano-designed building
— and the Whitney’s three former
homes. He follows such notables
as Thomas Campbell, director of
the Metropolitan Museum of Art;
Michael Conforti, director of the
Clark Art Institute in Williamstown,
Mass.; Pierre Rosenberg, former
director of the Louvre; and Rosalind
Savill, former director of The Wallace
Collection in London. The subjects
of their DIA talks have centered on
European art — to which Coleman
and Shirley Mopper were devoted.

First, a bit about the philanthropic
couple: Coleman Mopper was a
dermatologist who, with his wife,
Shirley, a travel agent, collected and
donated many important pieces of
European art to the DIA. The pair
raised two children, Margie and
Andrew, in Huntington Woods.
Dr. Mopper died in 1996; Shirley,
in 2010, after endowing a gal-
lery at the DIA for 19th-century
European sculpture and decorative
arts. Among the works the Moppers
donated are a bronze sculpture,
Neapolitan Fisher Boy, and Andy
Warhol’s giant panda painting.
The Moppers’ daughter, Margie
Mopper, says she and her brother,
Andrew — who both live in San
Diego — are “pleased and so fortu-
nate that the director of the Whitney
is coming to speak for the Coleman
Mopper Memorial Lecture.
“We were very proud of our par-
ents for donating many works of art,
including sculptures and paintings,
to the DIA so that the community