Edward Hopper's New York

  A new exhibition showcases more than 200 pictures from the “quintessential American realist” that highlight a key connection between person and place.
  “Cities are really palimpsests¹, so Edward Hopper's New York is definitely still here. You may need to look around for it, but I like that sense of discovery.” Kim Conaty, the curator of drawings and prints at the Whitney Museum, has spent the past four years working on the museum's latest Hopper show. It's the Whitney's first Hopper exhibition in a decade, since 2013's Hopper Drawing, which focused on his drawings. That's a long time, considering that the Whitney holds the world's largest collection of Hopper's work. The new show, Edward Hopper's New York, presents the famed American realist as a tried-and-true New Yorker – one who both captured unique, overlooked aspects of his city while also finding ways of universalizing it. Running until March 2023, it's a large show, with more than 200 paintings, watercolors, prints and drawings, and it's the first show ever to focus on Hopper's life in the Big Apple.
  Born in upstate New York's Hudson River Valley, Hopper moved to New York City in 1908 and spent the majority of his life there until his death in 1967. As a painter he eschewed statements like New York's world-famous skyline and the Brooklyn Bridge in favor of more overlooked vistas that brought the endless expanses of steel and concrete down to a human scale. This can be seen in works like Approaching a City, which shows a sight familiar to countless New Yorkers: a stretch of commuter rail just before it disappears into a tunnel. [...]
  “With the window paintings in particular,” said Conaty, “you're immediately reminded of what it feels like as a pedestrian and as a resident, where public and private blends together because we're all living in such close proximity together.”