A map with locations from Edward Hopper’s NYC paintings is available online

New York City was a muse of Edward Hopper, a remarkable realist painter. Although Hopper was born in Nyack, New York, he called Greenwich Village his home for nearly sixty years until his death in 1967. The well-known American artist captured New York City through its expansion and evolution. This winter, you have a chance to see this city through his lens. 

The Whitney Museum of American Art hosts an exhibition, “Edward Hopper’s New York'', which displays more than 200 paintings, watercolors, and prints and explores the artist’s life and work in the city. In addition, the museum has also launched a digital map that includes twenty locations across New York City that Hopper painted alongside the contemporary images of these sites.

“Hopper lived most of his life right here, only blocks from where the Whitney stands today,” said Kim Conaty, curator of the exhibition. “He experienced the same streets and witnessed the incessant cycles of demolition and construction that continue today, as New York reinvents itself again and again. Yet, as few others have done so poignantly, Hopper captured a city that was both changing and changeless, a particular place in time and one distinctly shaped by his imagination.”

While exploring the digital map, users will come across places like Queensboro Bridge and Manhattan Bridge alongside some long-gone sites, such as Sheridan Theater, which was demolished in 1969. According to The New York Times, the map aims to inspire visitors of the exhibition to explore Edward Hopper’s art outside the museum walls. 

The notable artist first visited New York City on a family day trip. After Edward Hopper graduated high school, he began to attend the New York School of Illustration and the New York School of Art. Hopper would commute to New York by ferry and draw his first sketches of the city. 

Those sketches and some of the artists’ personal items, such as letters and notebooks, are also part of the exhibition. The “Edward Hopper’s New York '' is open at the Whitney Museum of American Art through March 5, 2023. 

Resources:

“Explore NYC from Edward Hopper’s perspective with this new digital map,” by Aaron Ginsburg (6sqft, 2022)

“New exhibit at the Whitney offers a comprehensive look at Edward Hopper’s life and work in NYC,” by Devin Gannon (6sqft, 2022)

“Step into famed painter Edward Hopper’s NYC life with this mind-bending new map,” by Rossilynne Skena Culgan (Time Out, 2022)

“Edward Hopper’s New York, as It Looks Today,” by James Barron (The New York Times, 2022)

“THE WHITNEY MUSEUM ORGANIZES THE FIRST EXHIBITION TO FOCUS ON EDWARD HOPPER’S LIFE IN NEW YORK CITY,” (The Whitney Museum of American Art, 2022)