Hopper Drawing is the first major museum exhibition to focus on the drawings and creative process of Edward Hopper (1882–1967). More than anything else, Hopper’s drawings reveal the continually evolving relationship between observation and invention in the artist’s work, and his abiding interest in the spaces and motifs—the street, the movie theater, the office, the bedroom, the road—that he would return to throughout his career as an artist.

This exhibition, organized by the Whitney Museum of American Art, showcases drawings bequeathed to the museum by the artist’s widow Josephine Hopper, many of which have never before been exhibited or researched. The show surveys Hopper’s significant and underappreciated achievements as a draftsman, and will pair many of his greatest oil paintings—including Office at Night (1940), an important piece from the Walker Art Center’s collection—with their preparatory drawings and related works. The exhibition also features groundbreaking archival research into the buildings, spaces, and urban environments that inspired his work.