Experience a 'Night at the Museum' in Richmond, Virginia

Warm. Cozy. Inviting.

Words regularly used to describe hotels.

Words never used to describe Edward Hopper paintings.

Hopper (1882-1967) painted isolation. He painted cold, hard surfaces. He painted loneliness. He did so with a silent, aching, insightful mastery.

All of these attributes are on display in his most famous painting, an image you are surely familiar with, Nighthawks. Nighthawks is the street-level café scene viewed from the outside-in looking at a dapperly dressed mid-century couple, a man with his back to the viewer and an employee behind the counter, all disconnected-lost in their individual thoughts-despite their physical proximity.

The image has been endlessly parodied with the likes of James Dean, Marilyn Monroe and characters from "The Simpsons" occupying the café stools.

Despite the inhospitality of Hopper's painting, he was a prolific painter of hospitality scenes-hotel and motel rooms, lobbies and exteriors and the restaurants, entertainment and services offered there. That is the focus at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in Richmond, Virginia through February 3rd during its exhibition, Edward Hopper and the American Hotel.

"His hospitality services pictures are visual meditations on the look, character, and psychology-our experiences-of these lodgings," Dr. Leo G. Mazow, VMFA's Louise B. and J. Harwood Cochrane Curator of American Art and curator of Edward Hopper and the American Hotel, said. "Hopper's works are prompts for deep consideration of these common, yet emotionally charged, spaces."

As frequent travelers, especially, these images should elicit meaningful reactions and memories from us as we so regularly inhabit these spaces.

The VMFA takes its presentation of Hopper beyond a traditional look at one of America's greatest painters by offering guests a chance to spend a night in one of his hotel paintings. Literally. The Hopper Hotel Experience puts visitors "inside" his Western Motel painting of the Western Motel in El Paso, Texas with the museum painstakingly recreating every detail from the picture.

The museum's design team looked to Hopper's paintings and period sources such as magazines and advertisements, converting those patterns and objects into three-dimensions. Local and in-house designers, upholsterers and carpenters fabricated the accommodation.

The museum's production shop crafted the bed from scratch.

A local painter, with an assistant, painted the illusionist backdrop of mesas, sky and the green Buick.

The room was arranged on an angle to suggest the trapezoids of the painting which also has the motel room on an angle.

A real-life "Night at the Museum" experience.

If partaking in this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity appeals to you, you're not alone. All of the museum's more economical Hopper Hotel Experience A and B packages were booked within 48 hours of introduction and all packages sold out within a week and a half. The popularity of the experience has surprised museum officials with guests having booked from as far away as Italy.

Unfortunately at this time, there are no plans to add additional guest nights. You won't have any luck trying to stay in the original Western Motel in El Paso either. It has closed.

Where can you come up close with Hopper?

Nighthawks is on permanent view at the Art Institute of Chicago. The Whitney Museum of American Art in New York holds the largest collection of his work and always has a fine selection displayed.

But to put yourself "inside" a Hopper painting, consider a visit to Maine. In contrast to his later-career city scenes and interiors which created his legend, Hopper's early work prominently featured the wind-swept cliffs, lighthouses and seascapes found along the Northeastern seaboard, particularly Maine. While hinting at what was to come, these early paintings lack the uncanny isolation and sparseness of his mature work.

Hopper created almost 100 paintings, drawings, watercolors and prints during the nine summers he spent in Maine during the 1910s and 1920s.

Capt. Upton's House, the lighthouse keeper's residence at Two Lights in Cape Elizabeth. The Dories, Ogunquit, small fishing boats bobbing on the water in the tiny seaside village of Ogunquit. Pemaquid Light depicting Pemaquid Point Lighthouse in Bristol.

Each location remains similar to how Hopper viewed them almost 100 years ago, allowing you to occupy the space, to inhabit the paintings.

Hopper wasn't the only prominent American artist drawn to Maine's natural beauty. Andrew Wyeth, Robert Henri and Winslow Homer are, but a few of the others who spent extensive time there working. Work which can be seen along the Maine Art Museum Trail.

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