July 15, 5pm EST PREMIERE - Virginia Mecklenburg: Edward Hopper and the Power of Place, hosted by Elliott Forrest

Purchase this very special program to raise money for Edward Hopper House Museum & Study Center with Virginia M. Mecklenburg, Ph.D. senior curator at the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, D.C. 

In the summer of 1923, Edward Hopper went to Gloucester, Massachusetts, a bustling seaport and artist colony about thirty miles up the coast from Boston. It proved to be the turning point of his life. He met his future wife Jo Nivison and began painting in watercolor -- lighthouses, elegant homes of ship captains, ramshackle dwellings of Italian immigrants, and the trawlers that plied the Atlantic. When he showed them to Frank Rehn a year later, the dealer offered the forty-one-year-old Hopper his first ever gallery exhibition. Virginia Mecklenburg will trace the now forgotten implications behind watercolors that prompted Hopper to examine the relationship between the past and contemporary life. 

CLICK HERE TO PURCHASE - $50

Thank you for your generous support of Edward Hopper House Museum & Study Center. ​We are especially grateful to ArtsRock for their kind support in bringing this to you! Thank YOU for helping us raise funds for Edward Hopper House.  ​

Virginia M. Mecklenburg, Ph.D. is an art historian, writer, speaker, and senior curator of 20th century art at the Smithsonian American Art Museum. Her exhibitions and publications have featured Ashcan art, New Deal art, Realist painting in the United States, Amalia Mesa Bains, Edward Hopper, Jesús Moroles, Norman Rockwell, Georgia O’Keeffe, and other 20th and 21st-century artists. Her exhibition African American Art in the 20th Century is currently on tour to five museums. Upcoming projects include Subversive, Skilled, Sublime: Fiber Art by Women (opening spring 2022) and William H. Johnson: The Fighters for Freedom (fall 2023). She has served on advisory committees for Reynolda House Museum of American Art, the Sara Roby Foundation, the Inter-American Development Bank, the Art Museum of the Americas (OAS), and on the Board of Directors and as Vice President of the College Art Association (CAA). She holds a Ph.D. from the University of Maryland and M.A. and B.A degrees from the University of Texas at Austin.  

Elliott Forrest – Founding Executive Artistic Director, ArtsRock.org. Peabody Award winning afternoon host, New York’s Classical Radio Station, WQXR. Executive Producer, The Public Theater’s Shakespeare in the Park on the Radio, RICHARD II and ROMEO Y JULIETA. Host: The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center. Producer national tour AN EVENING WITH ITZHAK PERLMAN. Co-Director and Projection Designer for national tour and PBS TV Special: CONSIDERING MATTHEW SHEPARD. Co-director NO ONE IS FORGOTTEN. Director: A CHRISTMAS CAROL with David Hyde Pierce, F. Murray Abraham, Brian Cox, Tony Roberts and Kathleen Turner. Producer, Director, Designer: LA Philharmonic, The NY Philharmonic, Houston Symphony, Philadelphia Orchestra, Atlanta Symphony, New Haven Symphony Pasadena Pops, Little Orchestra Society. Host for 12 years on A&E Breakfast with the Arts. Holds BA, Theater, University of Texas, Austin.  www.ElliottForrest.com