IDEA PROTAGONISTA A ROMA CON L’ALLESTIMENTO SPETTACOLARE DELLA MOSTRA DI EDWARD HOPPER.

IDEA in the spotlight in Rome with the astounding fit-out of Edward Hopper’s show. Reproduction of the diner portrayed in Hopper’s famous painting “Nighthawks”.

IDEA Italian Association of Exhibition Designers has designed the fitting-out of Edward Hopper show, inaugurated on 16th February at Fondazione Roma Museo, via Del Corso, in the heart of Rome. The challenge was taken on by a team composed of designers-members of IDEA, Italian Association of Exhibition Designers, with the cooperation of young designers attending the IDEA Master’s Degree in Exhibition Design, started by the Association together with the Polytechnic Institute of Milan. The Team Master IDEA, made up of Augusta Grecchi, Saveria Petillo, Giorgio Radojkovic, Chiara Rubessi, has worked under the guidelines of Tutors Luca Cendali, Angelo Jelmini and Anna Olewska, with the collaboration of Francesco Murano for Light Design and under the organisational coordination of Mario Mastropietro and Luisa Pandolfi, IDEA Italian Association of Exhibition Designers President and Secretary General respectively. Concept The outfitting options that have been proposed aim at setting Hopper’s works in architectures dating back to his time and involving the visitor with eye-catching reproductions. Hence it follows the decision of enhancing the entrance hall, important space of a museum, and to destine it to the function of multimedia foyer, where the public will be received and impressed by a scenographic reproduction of the diner portrayed in Hopper’s painting Nighthawks (1942), where the preliminary sketches are shown. The visitor will step into an evocative night setting that encloses all those design researches that see the foyer like a place: a place for transit, a place for a stop, a place for discovery, relations, information and a multimedia place. Then, a place where many languages interact with the aim of being alive also after the visiting hours, for instance in the evening, and where it is possible to organize concerts and events associated with the subject of the show. Each hall has been conceived by sticking to the curatorial choice of Carter Foster, curator of the Whitney Museum, in order to give visitors the feeling of being in a different “framework”. Setting the works in their own context with a series of fitting-out reproductions conceived like a game between interiors and exteriors , recalling the places loved by the artist. The first and the second hall, dedicated to Self portrait and Formation and early work, Hopper as Illustrator, welcome the visitor in an environment that evokes the interior of an end-nineteenth-century residence, with boiserie decorations inspired from Hopper’s house. The third hall, Hopper in Paris, will offer the visitor a plein air stroll along the Seine, where a chromatic game of lights and colours reproduces the charm of a Parisian sunset. Through the engraving hall - Defining images, Hopper as a printmaker, whose setting highlights the technique applied and loved by the artist - the visitor will reach the Processo creativo (Creative Process) hall, where a light projection will guide the visitor enabling him to reproduce one or more Hopper’ sketches, to be kept like a personal evidence of his visit at the show. Along the voiced corridor that accompanies the visitor through one of the numerous journeys of Hoppers, from Paris to New York, the public will directly access Hopper’s study, set in the fifth hall, Hopper’s process, drawing into painting. Through the skylight structural element, the visitor will be wrapped-up by an ambient suffused with light. Light is then interpreted as the fil rouge and fundamental element of Hopper’s painting. We now reach the sixth hall, Hopper’s Eroticism, presenting a refined fitting-out that recalls a private eroticism, almost made of whispers. We conclude our telling in the seventh hall, Essential Hopper: Time, Place, Memory, where staging suggests a veranda surrounded with a bright sky, the same sky portrayed in Hopper’s gorgeous paintings. Ambient sounds and noises are spread all-over the fitted spaces to make the course of the show more exciting. IDEA Italian Association of Exhibition Designers was founded in 2006 by a selected team of qualified designers willing to spread the culture of the exhibition design, certifying its quality and highlighting the peculiarities of an “interdisciplinary regulation” such as the Exhibition Design that makes use of the architecture, graphics and communication languages at the same time. From the very beginning the members of IDEA have felt the need of being actively involved in the training sector and to transfer their knowledge to young designers, thus contributing to the creation of a complete professional figure, able to manage all the themes related to “exhibiting”. Therefore the first action of IDEA was to establish in cooperation with the Polytechnic Institute of Milan a M