SUSAN CHEN: RoomS By The sea
Exhibition On View: October 10, 2026 - February 21, 2027
Opening Reception: Saturday, October 17, 2026 from 3:00-5:30 PM.
Opening Reception: Saturday, October 17, 2026 from 3:00-5:30 PM.
Edward Hopper House Museum is pleased to present this exhibition alongside our annual "Hopper's Nyack" Week En Plein Air festival. See here for more information about the festival.
Edward Hopper House Museum & Study Center presents Susan Chen: Rooms by the Sea, marking the New York–based artist’s first museum solo exhibition. The exhibition brings together a series of Chen’s richly hued, energetic plein air paintings of Cape Cod, Massachusetts, alongside works on paper and watercolors by Edward Hopper and by Josephine Nivison Hopper.
Centered around Chen’s recent large-scale double portrait, Rooms by the Sea (2026)—a direct tribute to Edward Hopper’s iconic 1951 masterpiece of the same title at the Yale University Art Gallery depicting his Truro studio —the exhibition explores the Outer Cape of Massachusetts through her vibrant, contemporary lens.
Susan Chen, Rooms by the Sea, 2026, Oil on linen, 64 x 72 in., Photo Credit: JSP Art Photography
Reimagining the American Dream on the Outer Cape
As a first-generation American artist, Susan Chen (b. 1992, Hong Kong SAR) weaves personal history, cross-cultural perspective, and deep ecological observation into the traditional lineage of American landscape painting. She began visiting the Cape every summer ten years ago; her 2024 trip—intended as a respite after a busy period— sparked in her a restlessness. Processing the sensation through resonance with artists Barkley L. Hendricks in Jamaica, Alex Katz in Maine, David Hockney in Yorkshire, Henri Matisse in Corsica, and, above all, Edward Hopper in Truro, Chen turned to her surroundings and began to paint. What began as an annual summer getaway evolved into an immersive project, yielding nearly forty canvases painted outdoors across Truro, Eastham, and Provincetown. The paintings in this show are her latest collection. The exhibition also includes rare watercolors and drawings from the Provincetown Art Association and Museum, including Edward Hopper’s studies for Cape Cod Morning (1950, oil on canvas, Smithsonian American Art Museum), and selections from the Sanborn Josephine Nivison Hopper Collection.
Where Edward and Josephine (‘Jo’) Nivison Hopper recorded Cape Cod’s quiet, sun-bleached isolation beginning in 1930—well before Route 6 began to expand—Chen approaches the coast as a first-generation immigrant, reflecting on assimilation, belonging, and the complexities of the American Dream. Her canvases capture both the historic allure of the coastal landscape and its modern vulnerabilities—from changing seasonal climates to the site’s dual identity as a indigenous contact point and a modern leisure resort.
Where Hopper's Cape Cod is one of a quiet hum, Chen's rumbles, notes exhibition curator Indira A. Abiskaroon Valbuena. The whisper of beach grass has grown to a rustle, the soft lap of waves now whooshes. In place of Hopper's elegiac stillness, Chen's canvases quiver, rattle, and sway—lush, immediate, no less honest, and no less sublime.
As a first-generation American artist, Susan Chen (b. 1992, Hong Kong SAR) weaves personal history, cross-cultural perspective, and deep ecological observation into the traditional lineage of American landscape painting. She began visiting the Cape every summer ten years ago; her 2024 trip—intended as a respite after a busy period— sparked in her a restlessness. Processing the sensation through resonance with artists Barkley L. Hendricks in Jamaica, Alex Katz in Maine, David Hockney in Yorkshire, Henri Matisse in Corsica, and, above all, Edward Hopper in Truro, Chen turned to her surroundings and began to paint. What began as an annual summer getaway evolved into an immersive project, yielding nearly forty canvases painted outdoors across Truro, Eastham, and Provincetown. The paintings in this show are her latest collection. The exhibition also includes rare watercolors and drawings from the Provincetown Art Association and Museum, including Edward Hopper’s studies for Cape Cod Morning (1950, oil on canvas, Smithsonian American Art Museum), and selections from the Sanborn Josephine Nivison Hopper Collection.
Where Edward and Josephine (‘Jo’) Nivison Hopper recorded Cape Cod’s quiet, sun-bleached isolation beginning in 1930—well before Route 6 began to expand—Chen approaches the coast as a first-generation immigrant, reflecting on assimilation, belonging, and the complexities of the American Dream. Her canvases capture both the historic allure of the coastal landscape and its modern vulnerabilities—from changing seasonal climates to the site’s dual identity as a indigenous contact point and a modern leisure resort.
Where Hopper's Cape Cod is one of a quiet hum, Chen's rumbles, notes exhibition curator Indira A. Abiskaroon Valbuena. The whisper of beach grass has grown to a rustle, the soft lap of waves now whooshes. In place of Hopper's elegiac stillness, Chen's canvases quiver, rattle, and sway—lush, immediate, no less honest, and no less sublime.
Susan Chen, Stormy Seas at Bay,
2026,
Oil on linen,
24 x 20 in., Photo Credit: JSP Art Photography
Uncovering the Legacy of Josephine Nivison Hopper
A central force of the exhibition is Chen’s dialogue with Josephine Hopper, whose critical contributions to her husband’s career—and her own artistic practice—were historically sidelined, until the first ever art historical article appeared on her in 1980, with pioneering scholarship actively ongoing.
This exhibition offers a fascinating dialogue between artists across generations, each grappling with memory, place, and modern life, says Executive Director Kathleen Motes Bennewitz. As we celebrate the Museum's 55th anniversary in 2026, this show perfectly honors our mission to champion contemporary voices inspired by the Hoppers' lives and enduring legacies.
While developing this exhibition at the Edward Hopper House Museum, and also spending time at the Truro Historical Society, Chen encountered Jo Hopper’s legacy, including her hand-drawn Truro maps (The Pratt Munson College of Art and Design, formerly known as the Munson-Williams-Proctor Institute, Utica, NY) and watercolors. Chen’s own 2026 double-portrait and flower still life draws direct inspiration from Jo’s painting Obituary (Fleurs du Temps Jadis / Obituary; 1948, oil on canvas, Whitney Museum of American Art), honoring Jo’s overlooked place in art history.
A central force of the exhibition is Chen’s dialogue with Josephine Hopper, whose critical contributions to her husband’s career—and her own artistic practice—were historically sidelined, until the first ever art historical article appeared on her in 1980, with pioneering scholarship actively ongoing.
This exhibition offers a fascinating dialogue between artists across generations, each grappling with memory, place, and modern life, says Executive Director Kathleen Motes Bennewitz. As we celebrate the Museum's 55th anniversary in 2026, this show perfectly honors our mission to champion contemporary voices inspired by the Hoppers' lives and enduring legacies.
While developing this exhibition at the Edward Hopper House Museum, and also spending time at the Truro Historical Society, Chen encountered Jo Hopper’s legacy, including her hand-drawn Truro maps (The Pratt Munson College of Art and Design, formerly known as the Munson-Williams-Proctor Institute, Utica, NY) and watercolors. Chen’s own 2026 double-portrait and flower still life draws direct inspiration from Jo’s painting Obituary (Fleurs du Temps Jadis / Obituary; 1948, oil on canvas, Whitney Museum of American Art), honoring Jo’s overlooked place in art history.
