A New Edward Hopper-Themed Motel Room Allows You to Experience All the Alienation of the Artist’s Classic Paintings

As museums all over the world vie for the attention—and
dollars—of visitors, they are increasingly turning to
experience-based promotions. The Virginia Museum of Fine Arts
is no exception.

This October, the institution will host a range of
experiences based on the coinciding exhibition “Edward Hopper and the American Hotel“—including
the chance to stay at the museum in a three-dimensional recreation
of the room in his painting, Western Motel
(1965).

The exhibition will present more than 60 works by Hopper drawn
from public and private collections that explore his interest in
hotels, motels, and other hospitality sites. One of the
pictures, House at Dark (1935), was
purchased by the VFMA in 1953, the year he served as a juror for
the museum’s biennial. (He also served as vice chairman of the
biennial exhibition in 1938.)

House at Dark will be on display along
with drawings, watercolors, and paintings, plus a cache of
postcards and diary entries by his wife, the artist Josephine
Hopper, who kept mementos from the couple’s travels throughout the
United States. The show also features 35 works by John Singer
Sargent, Charles Demuth, Reginald Marsh, Cindy Sherman, and Ed
Ruscha.

But most unconventionally, the museum will recreate Western
Motel in 3D, and allow visitors not only the opportunity
to walk into the scene, but also to spend a night in it as
guests.

Hopper is best known for creating alienating scenes of modern
life, often depicting just one or two people who do not interact
with one another. So whether visitors will really want to pay for
such an experience remains to be seen. But the museum is also
offering other, more conventional options to coincide with the
show, such as a dinner at the museum restaurant and guided tours
with the show’s curator.

Details on the packages related to the “Hopper Hotel
Experience,” as it has been named, will be made available as the
exhibition date draws near. In the meantime, the museum says the
show “represents the first investigation of the artist’s canonical
images of hotels, motels, and other hospitality settings.”

“Edward Hopper and the American Hotel” is on view at
the VMFA from October 26, 2019–February 23, 2020, and will then
travel to the Indianapolis Museum of Art at
Newfields.

The post A New Edward Hopper-Themed Motel Room Allows You to
Experience All the Alienation of the Artist’s Classic Paintings
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