All photos from the 2024 Step Into Hopper event © Brake Through Media
In a fluorescent-lit diner on a dark city street, film noir-type characters look aloof at the counter while a waiter tends to them. It’s 1942, and the scene is called “Nighthawks.” This painting by artist Edward Hopper is regarded as one of the most famous American paintings. Although it depicts a fictional street corner, the artwork was inspired “by a restaurant Hopper had seen on Greenwich Avenue in New York,” according to the Art Institute of Chicago, where the painting resides. The largest collection of Hopper’s works, including “A Woman in the Sun,” however, can be found at the Whitney Museum. If you have your hearts set on seeing “Nighthawks,” though, the Whitney and the Meatpacking District have leveled up the experience by allowing art lovers to step inside the iconic painting.
Hopper was born in Nyack, New York, on July 22, 1882. During the month of what would have been his 143rd birthday, the Whitney Museum and the Meatpacking District are again celebrating this famous New Yorker with Step Into Hopper, a public art display from July 11 through July 13.
As part of the museum’s third annual West Side Fest, life-size three-dimensional recreations of some of Hopper’s best-known paintings will be on display in the Meatpacking District for photo ops.
Visitors can even get inside the displays, created by New York-based Theresa Rivera Design. In addition to “Nighthawks,” “Soir Bleu,” and “Early Sunday Morning” will also be on display. At select times, NYC drag clown Tillie the Clown will be on hand, depicting the clown in “Soir Bleu.”
“We’re proud that the Meatpacking District continues to be a destination where New Yorkers and visitors alike can access meaningful and engaging art,” Jeffrey LeFrancois, Executive Director of the Meatpacking District Management Association, said.
“And putting these installations, which themselves are New York classics, into different New York backdrops adds an exciting layer of contrast and a 21st-century edge to the works.”
“Early Sunday Morning” depicts Seventh Avenue in the 1930s. “Hopper was frequently inspired by the two locations in which he spent most of his time: downtown New York, where he lived and worked in the same apartment on Washington Square from 1913 until his death in 1967; and Cape Cod, where, beginning in 1934, he maintained a second home and studio,” according to the Whitney Museum.
This is the second year Step Into Hopper will be presented, but “in entirely new locations, activating all corners of the neighborhood, including our new West 14th Street Promenade,” said LeFrancois.
“We recently expanded pedestrian space along West 14th Street between Ninth and Tenth Avenues and this is a perfect example of how we plan to program space going forward in order to continue to draw visitors to the neighborhood.”
Step Into Hopper opens to the public at 10 a.m. on Friday, July 11, and runs through Sunday, July 13.
RELATED:
