HOPPER DRAWING: A PAINTERS PROCESS OPENS AT WALKER ART CENTER WITH TARGET FREE THURSDAY NIGHT CELEBRATION MARCH 13

EXHIBITION IS FIRST TO FOCUS ON THE DRAWINGS AND CREATIVE PROCESS OF THE ICONIC 20th CENTURY ARTIST

MINNEAPOLIS, February 26, 2014The Walker Art Center presents Hopper Drawing: A Painters Process, the first major exhibition to focus on the drawings and creative process of the iconic American artist Edward Hopper (18821967). While past exhibitions and publications have investigated Hoppers work and artistic practice, this touring exhibition for the first time illuminates the centrality of drawing to Hoppers work and allows a fresh look at many of his landmark paintings. Organized by the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, the exhibition will open at the Walker on March 13, 2014 with a free Opening-Night Party, and will be on view through June 20, 2014 in the Target and Friedman Galleries.

Hopper Drawing: A Painters Process features more than two hundred works by the artist, including drawings, watercolors, and paintings, and is the result of in-depth curatorial research into the more than 2,500 works on paper by Hopper in the Whitneys collection, many of which have never been seen. The works on view will span the artists career, and will include 22 of his best-known paintingsincluding Office at Night (1940) from the Walkers collectionwith their preparatory drawings and studies. In doing so, the exhibition illuminates how the artist transformed ordinary subjectsa city street, an office space, a house, a bedroominto enduring images that are among the most celebrated in American art.

Related projects:

• Old School Art School, a dedicated gallery space housing a fully functioning studio in which local art instructors will conduct drawing classes ranging from beginners' lessons to advanced life drawing.
• Hopper Stories, a selection of short films presented in a screening area within the galleries from the series Hopper Stories (2012), where eight European directors each created a short film based on an Edward Hopper painting.
• Office at Night: A Residency and Literary Collaboration, a co-commission by the Walker and Coffee House Press of a collaborative novella by Laird Hunt and Kate Bernheimer inspired by Hopper's Office at Night. The writers describe their process as taking up residence inside the painting, imagining the lives and relationships between the enigmatic characters in Hoppers iconic painting. The story will be released as a serial on the Walkers website throughout the month of April and published as an e-book by Coffee House Press in June 2014.