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As part of an exhibition of the artist’s hotel paintings, the Virginia Museum of Arts has recreated Edward Hopper’s Western Motel – where gallery-goers can spend the night.
Every detail of the 1957 painting has been carefully recreated, from the sage green walls and brass bedside lamps to the Buick parked outside the window. All that’s missing is the painting’s mysterious waiting woman.
The room is part of the Richmond museum’s Edward Hopper and the American Hotel exhibition, which brings together the artist’s depictions of roadside motels, apartments and boarding houses. The paintings capture the hospitality boom in the US, which Hopper himself was part of, having worked as an illustrator for the hotel trade mags of the time.
Visitors with a yearning for the glory days of the hotel can snuggle up under the Western Motel’s maroon duvet for $150 a night. As well as appreciating the classic midcentury design, guests can enjoy views into the surrounding galleries for some after-hours appreciation of Hopper’s work.
