Juniors Visit Edward Hopper’s New York

by Dr. Andrew Marzoni
 
On January 9th, 11th-grade students in my Honors American Literature class and Mr. Hartman’s Pre-Portfolio Painting & Drawing class took the 1 train downtown to the Whitney Museum of American Art to see Edward Hopper’s New York, a new retrospective of the celebrated American painter. For many students, this was a first visit to the museum, and a rare opportunity to learn interesting bits of trivia about the painter’s life and work: that his wife, Josephine, for instance, served as the model for every female figure across his entire body of work, and that the couple were avid theatregoers, even attending the premiere run of Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman in 1949 (which the students would see for themselves at the Hudson Theatre on Broadway later that week). Our gracious guides did what they could to ensure that it would not be the students’ only visit to the museum, providing them with free passes at the end of the tour to return with family and friends.
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