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Gloucester Daily Times: Sold-out Hopper show won't be extended

October 11, 2023

Cape Ann Museum’s ground-breaking and record-setting special exhibition of works by celebrated American artist Edward Hopper is sold out.

The show, “Edward Hopper & Cape Ann: Illuminating an American Landscape,” is in its final week, closing Oct. 16. All other museum galleries are open; only admission to the special exhibition is sold out.

The museum extended its hours in the final weeks to accommodate the demand for the Hopper exhibit. But extension of the closing date of the show is not possible because many works loaned to Cape Ann Museum to mount the exhibition must be returned, museum Director Oliver Barker said.

The exhibition is presented in collaboration with the Whitney Museum of American Art, the major repository of the Hoppers’ work. It also features works brought together from the Brooklyn Museum, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, National Gallery of Art, The Philadelphia Museum of Art, and 28 other institutions and private lenders.

“We are so delighted that so many people have had the chance to see the exhibit and avail themselves of the chance to visit the sites that the Hoppers both painted, too,” Barker said.

This exhibition has broken all previous attendance records in the museum’s 148-year history.

Barker said some dates and times may become available online and suggested checking the ticketing page should any availability open up.

The museum will be closed Tuesday, Oct. 17, and Wednesday, Oct. 18.

A special 224-page exhibition book, written by the show’s curator Elliot Bostwick Davis is available at the museum’s shop and other online outlets.

“The success of Hopper’s Gloucester watercolors transformed his work in all media and set the stage for his monumental career,” Davis said.

Hopper, a New York artist best known for his etchings and illustrations and who had not sold a painting in 10 years arrived on his second trip to Gloucester with Josephine “Jo” Nivison — later his wife — in the city’s 300th anniversary year, when he painted watercolors of the seaport’s modest homes, immigrant neighborhoods and trawlers.

It was his 1923 watercolor with loose brushwork of an ornate Victorian house with a mansard roof on Rocky Neck that led Hopper to become one of the best known American painters of the 20th century.

“On the occasion of the city’s 400+ anniversary, this exhibition represents a very important commitment by this museum to showcase how American art and history has been transformed by Cape Ann as a singularly unique place,” Barker has said previously.

More information is available by visiting capeannmuseum.org.

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