‘Natalie Ball: bilwi naats Ga’niipci’ On View at Whitney Museum of American Art

 

 

 

Image credit: Natalie Ball, Burden Basket, 2023. Elk rawhide, cotton, newspaper, wood, leather, plastic beads, willow branches, artificial hair, aluminum foil, chalk, metal clamps, rope, makeup, and graphite, 80 × 60 × 24in. (203.2 × 152.4 × 61 cm). Collection of the artist. Photo by Audrey Wang

Natalie Ball: bilwi naats Ga’niipciopening at the Whitney Museum of American Art today, November 17, 2023, is the first New York solo exhibition for boundary-breaking artist and community leader Natalie Ball.

The exhibition presents a group of never-before-seen sculptural assemblages that deepen and destabilize understandings of Indigenous life in the United States. Ball, who is Black, Modoc, and Klamath, lives and works in her ancestral homelands in Southern Oregon and Northern California, where, in addition to creating artworks, she serves as an elected official on the Klamath Tribes Tribal Council.

Continue reading “‘Natalie Ball: bilwi naats Ga’niipci’ On View at Whitney Museum of American Art”

Whitney Museum Presents a Three-Day Festival Celebrating Artist Harry Smith, December 8-10

 

 

 

Photographer unknown, Harry Smith at Naropa Institute, Boulder, CO, 1990. Gelatin silver print, 10 × 8 in. (25.4 × 20.3 cm). Harry Smith Papers, Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles; gift of the Harry Smith Archives. Image courtesy Whitney Museum of American Art.

The Whitney Museum of American Art invites visitors of all ages to discover and celebrate artist Harry Smith’s eclectic life and creative pursuits in a three-day festival on Friday, December 8, through Sunday, December 10. My Harry features talks, screenings, artmaking workshops, performances, and listening sessions that explore Smith’s interests in the spiritual and occult, eccentric collections, folk music, and more.

Continue reading “Whitney Museum Presents a Three-Day Festival Celebrating Artist Harry Smith, December 8-10”

‘Ruth Asawa Through Line’ at The Whitney Museum of American Art

 

 

 

Ruth Asawa, Untitled (BMC.59, Meander – Straight Lines), c. 1948. Ink on paper, 7 7/8 × 13 1/2 in. (20 × 34.3 cm). Private collection. Artwork © 2023 Ruth Asawa Lanier, Inc./Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Courtesy David Zwirner

Ruth Asawa Through Line, opening at the Whitney Museum of American Art on September 16, 2023, spotlights the work of groundbreaking artist Ruth Asawa (1926–2013). Known broadly for her rhythmic looped-wire sculptures, Asawa dedicated herself to daily drawing exercises, which served as the connective tissue―or through line―of her creative process and fueled her commitment to art. Through drawing, Asawa explored her surroundings and turned everyday encounters into moments of profound beauty, endowing ordinary objects with new aesthetic possibilities.

Continue reading “‘Ruth Asawa Through Line’ at The Whitney Museum of American Art”

‘Ilana Savdie: Radical Contractions’ to Open at Whitney Museum of American Art, July 14th

 

 

 

Image credit: Ilana Savdie, Baths of Synovia (Baño Sinovial), 2023. Oil, acrylic, and beeswax on canvas stretched on panel, 120 × 86 in. (304.8 × 218.44 cm). Courtesy of the Artist. © Ilana Savdie. Photograph by Lance Brewer

Ilana Savdie: Radical Contractions, opening at the Whitney Museum of American Art July 14, 2023, spotlights emerging powerhouse Ilana Savdie and her explorations of performance, transgression, identity, and power through vibrant and intense large-scale canvases. The artist’s striking new paintings and black-and-white drawings, which are foundational for her paintings, will debut at the Whitney and were created specifically for this exhibition.

Continue reading “‘Ilana Savdie: Radical Contractions’ to Open at Whitney Museum of American Art, July 14th”

Whitney Museum Reimagines Collection in New Exhibition Exploring ~ Inheritance

 

 

 

Sophie Rivera, I am U, 1995. Gelatin silver print, 38 5/8 × 38 9/16 in. (98.1 × 97.9 cm). Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; gift of the artist 2019.390. © Estate of Dr. Martin Hurwitz

Beginning Wednesday, June 28, the Whitney Museum of American Art presents Inheritance, an exhibition of nearly sixty artworks by forty-three leading artists that traces the profound impact of legacy across familial, historical, and aesthetic lines. Featuring primarily new acquisitions and rarely-seen works from the collection, this diverse array of paintings, sculptures, videos, photographs, drawings, and major time-based media installations from the last five decades asks us to consider what has been passed on and how it may shift, change, or live again.

Inheritance is organized by Rujeko Hockley, Arnhold Associate Curator at the Whitney Museum of American Art, and is on view in the Museum’s sixth-floor galleries from June 28, 2023, through February 2024.

Continue reading “Whitney Museum Reimagines Collection in New Exhibition Exploring ~ Inheritance”

Enjoy Free Entry to Whitney Museum on Earth Day 2023

 

 

 

Photograph by Filip Wolak; Installation view of no existe un mundo poshuracán: Puerto Rican Art in the Wake of Hurricane Maria (Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, November 23, 2022-April 23, 2023). Gabriela Salazar, Reclamation (and Place, Puerto Rico), 2022. Photograph by Sebastian Bach

The Whitney Museum of American Art is offering free admission to all visitors on Saturday, April 22, in celebration of both Earth Day and the final weekend of its landmark exhibition no existe un mundo poshuracán: Puerto Rican Art in the Wake of Hurricane Maria.

For one weekend only, the Museum will have three exhibitions on view that, in part, address the environment, climate change, or our relationship to the land.

Free tickets for April 22 are available while supplies last. Advanced tickets are strongly recommended; visit whitney.org/tickets.

Continue reading “Enjoy Free Entry to Whitney Museum on Earth Day 2023”

‘Jaune Quick-to-See Smith: Memory Map’ will Open at The Whitney Museum of American Art in April

 

 

 

Image credit: Jaune Quick-to-See Smith, Indian Map, 1992. Oil, paper, newspaper, and fabric on canvas, two panels: 60 × 100 in. (152.4 × 254 cm) overall. Private collection. © Jaune Quick-to-See Smith. Photograph by David Bowers

Jaune Quick-to-See Smith: Memory Map,on view at the Whitney Museum of American Art from April 19 through August 13, 2023, is a recognition of a groundbreaking artist’s work. For nearly five decades, Jaune Quick-to-See Smith, a citizen of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Nation, has charted an exceptional and unorthodox career as an artist, activist, curator, educator, and advocate. The exhibition highlights how Smith uses her drawings, prints, paintings, and sculptures to flip commonly held historical narratives and illuminate absurdities in the dominant culture.

Continue reading “‘Jaune Quick-to-See Smith: Memory Map’ will Open at The Whitney Museum of American Art in April”

The Exhibition ‘no existe un mundo poshuracán: Puerto Rican Art in the Wake of Hurricane Maria’ to Open at The Whitney, Coinciding with Fifth Anniversary of Hurricane Maria

 

 

 

Gamaliel Rodríguez, Collapsed Soul, 2020–21. Ink and acrylic on canvas, 84 × 112 in. (213.3 × 284.5 cm). © 2021 Gamaliel Rodríguez. Courtesy the artist and Nathalie Karg Gallery NYC. Photograph by Gamaliel Rodríguez

no existe un mundo poshuracán: Puerto Rican Art in the Wake of Hurricane Maria is organized to coincide with the fifth anniversary of Hurricane Maria—a category 5 storm that hit Puerto Rico on September 20, 2017. The exhibition explores how artists have responded to the transformative years since that event by bringing together more than fifty artworks made over the last five years by an intergenerational group of more than fifteen artists from Puerto Rico and the diaspora. no existe un mundo poshuracán—a verse borrowed from Puerto Rican poet Raquel Salas Rivera—is the first scholarly exhibition focused on Puerto Rican art to be organized by a large U.S. museum in nearly half a century.

Continue reading “The Exhibition ‘no existe un mundo poshuracán: Puerto Rican Art in the Wake of Hurricane Maria’ to Open at The Whitney, Coinciding with Fifth Anniversary of Hurricane Maria”

Edward Hopper’s New York Opens at Whitney Museum of American Art with Digital Interactive Map of Sites He Painted as They Look Today

 

 

 

Fig. 21. Nighthawks, 1942. Oil on canvas, 33⁄) $ 60 in. (84.1 $ 152.4 cm). Art Institute of Chicago, IL; Friends of American Art Collection

Edward Hopper’s New York, on view at the Whitney Museum of American Art from October 19, 2022, through March 5, 2023, offers an unprecedented examination of Hopper’s life and work in the city that he called home for nearly six decades (1908–67). The exhibition charts the artist’s enduring fascination with the city through more than 200 paintings, watercolors, prints, and drawings from the Whitney’s preeminent collection of Hopper’s work, loans from public and private collections, and archival materials including printed ephemera, correspondence, photographs, and notebooks. From early sketches to paintings from his late in his career, Edward Hopper’s New York reveals a vision of the metropolis that is as much a manifestation of Hopper himself as it is a record of a changing city, whose perpetual and sometimes tense reinvention feels particularly relevant today.

In addition, explore the new interactive digital map inside Edward Hopper’s New York. See the sites he painted as they look today.

Continue reading “Edward Hopper’s New York Opens at Whitney Museum of American Art with Digital Interactive Map of Sites He Painted as They Look Today”

The Whitney Presents ‘At The Dawn of a New Age: Early Twentieth-Century American Modernism’

 

 

 

Installation view of At the Dawn of a New Age: Early Twentieth-Century American Modernism (Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, May 4, 2022-January 2023). From left to right: Georgia O’Keeffe, Black and White, 1930; William Zorach, Woods in Autumn, 1913; Agnes Pelton, Sea Change, 1931; Henrietta Shore, Trail of Life, 1923. Photograph by Ron Amstutz

The Whitney Museum of American Art presents At the Dawn of a New Age: Early Twentieth-Century American Modernism, an exhibition of over sixty works by more than forty-five artists that highlights the complexity of American art produced between 1900 and 1930. The exhibition showcases how American artists responded to the realities of a rapidly modernizing period through an array of abstract styles and media. At the Dawn of a New Age features artworks drawn primarily from the Whitney’s collection, including new acquisitions and works that have not been on view at the Museum for decades. The exhibition provides a broader perspective on early twentieth-century American modernism by including well-known artists like Marsden Hartley, Oscar Bluemner, Elie Nadelman, Charles Burchfield, Aaron Douglas, and Georgia O’Keeffe, as well as groundbreaking, historically overlooked artists like Henrietta Shore, Charles Duncan, Yun Gee, Manierre Dawson, Blanche Lazzell, Ben Benn, Isami Doi, and Albert Bloch.

Continue reading “The Whitney Presents ‘At The Dawn of a New Age: Early Twentieth-Century American Modernism’”

Whitney Museum of American Art Celebrates PRIDE! in June, 2022

 

 

 

The Whitney Museum of American Art presents a series of free, on-site public programs and events celebrating Pride, June 9–12. Whitney Pride! will activate the Museum building and surrounding neighborhood with festivities for visitors of all ages. Whitney Pride! is part of the Museum’s ongoing commitment to support LGBTQ+ artists and communities and offer an inclusive space for all to gather and enjoy American art.

Continue reading “Whitney Museum of American Art Celebrates PRIDE! in June, 2022”

Whitney Biennial 2022: Quiet As It’s Kept ~ 63 Artists & Collectives Selected for the Eightieth Edition at The Whitney

 

 

 

Ralph Lemon, Untitled, 2021. Oil and acrylic on paper, 26 × 40 in. (66.1 × 101.6 cm). Image courtesy the artist

The Whitney Museum of American Art announced today that sixty-three artists and collectives will be participating in Whitney Biennial 2022: Quiet as It’s Kept, co-organized by two Whitney curators, David Breslin and Adrienne Edwards. This will be the eightieth iteration in the long-running series of annual and biennial exhibitions launched by the Museum’s founder, Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney, in 1932. The 2022 Biennial takes over most of the Whitney from April 6 through September 5, with portions of the exhibition and some programs continuing through October 23, 2022.

Continue reading “Whitney Biennial 2022: Quiet As It’s Kept ~ 63 Artists & Collectives Selected for the Eightieth Edition at The Whitney”

Whitney Museum & Dorothy Lichtenstein Announce Donation of Roy Lichtenstein’s West Village Studio as New Home of Independent Study Program

 

 

 

Roy Lichtenstein’s Studio, 741/745 Washington Street. Image via google maps

Dorothy Lichtenstein, widow of Roy Lichtenstein, and Adam D. Weinberg, Alice Pratt Brown Director of the Whitney Museum of American Art, today announced that the Lichtenstein family has promised to donate the late artist’s studio building to the Museum. The Whitney, which since moving downtown in 2015 has been a neighbor of the studio, operating four blocks north on Gansevoort Street, will adapt the space to serve as the first permanent home of its widely influential Independent Study Program, which was founded in 1968.

Continue reading “Whitney Museum & Dorothy Lichtenstein Announce Donation of Roy Lichtenstein’s West Village Studio as New Home of Independent Study Program”

Jasper Johns: Mind/Mirror opens at The Whitney Museum of American Art

 

 

 

Image credit: Jasper Johns, Racing Thoughts, 1983. Encaustic and collage on canvas, 48 1/8 × 75 3/8 in. (122.2 × 191.5 cm). Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; purchase, with funds from the Burroughs Wellcome Purchase Fund; Leo Castelli; the Wilfred P. and Rose J. Cohen Purchase Fund; the Julia B. Engel Purchase Fund; the Equitable Life Assurance Society of the United States Purchase Fund; The Sondra and Charles Gilman, Jr. Foundation, Inc.; S. Sidney Kahn; The Lauder Foundation, Leonard and Evelyn Lauder Fund; the Sara Roby Foundation; and the Painting and Sculpture Committee 84.6. © 2021 Jasper Johns / Licensed by VAGA at Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

The radical, inventive art of Jasper Johns (b. 1930) continues to influence today’s artists like few others. In an unprecedented collaboration, the Whitney and the Philadelphia Museum of Art will stage a simultaneous retrospective—the largest of Johns’s seven-decade career—that offers a fresh take on the living legend. From his iconic flags to lesser-known and recent works, the exhibition will feature paintings, sculptures, drawings, and prints—nearly five hundred artworks across the two museums, many of which are from Johns’s personal collection and will be shown publicly for the first time.

Continue reading “Jasper Johns: Mind/Mirror opens at The Whitney Museum of American Art”

David Hammons Permanent Installation ‘Day’s End’ in Hudson River Park + Six Rarely-Seen Works in Exhibit at The Drawing Center

 

 

 

Rendering of the proposed project, Day’s End by David Hammons, as seen from the Whitney Museum of American Art. Courtesy Guy Nordenson and Associates.

On April 29, 2021, the Whitney announced the completion of David Hammons’s permanent public sculpture Day’s End (2021), one of the largest public art projects completed in the United States this year. Located in Hudson River Park along the southern edge of Gansevoort Peninsula, directly across from the Museum, Day’s End was developed in collaboration with the artist and Hudson River Park Trust. The sculpture derives its inspiration and name from multi-media artist Gordon Matta-Clark’s 1975 intervention in which he cut openings into the existing, abandoned Pier 52 shed. With exquisite simplicity, Hammons’s artwork traces the outlines, dimensions, and location of the original Pier 52 shed in slender steel pipes. Visible from numerous vantage points at the Museum and from multiple locations along the Hudson River Park promenade, the sculpture measures 52 feet high at its peak, 325 feet long, and 65 feet wide.

Continue reading “David Hammons Permanent Installation ‘Day’s End’ in Hudson River Park + Six Rarely-Seen Works in Exhibit at The Drawing Center”

Dawoud Bey: An American Project opening at The Whitney Museum of American Art

 

 

 

Dawoud Bey, Martina and Rhonda, 1993. Six dye diffusion transfer prints (Polaroid), 48 x 60 in. (121.9 x 152.4 cm) Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; gift of Eric Ceputis and David W. Williams 2018 82a-f © Dawoud Bey

Dawoud Bey (b.1953, Queens, NY) has committed more than four decades to photographing underrepresented subjects and fostering dialogue that addresses African American history and contemporary society and politics. The artist’s first retrospective in twenty-five years, An American Project,, explores the arc of Bey’s career from 1975 to 2017 through nearly eighty works across eight major series. Reflecting the evolution of Bey’s vision, the exhibition examines his enduring engagement with portraiture, place, and history. From early portraits in Harlem and classic street photography to multi-panel studio portraits and nocturnal landscapes, Bey has consistently focused his lens on Black individuals, foregrounding the uniqueness of his subjects while reflecting the profound and ongoing effects of the history of the United States. Co-organized with the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, An American Project will be on view at the Whitney from April 17, 2021 through October 3, 2021. The exhibition is co-curated by Corey Keller, curator of photography at SFMOMA, and Elisabeth Sherman, assistant curator at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.

Continue reading “Dawoud Bey: An American Project opening at The Whitney Museum of American Art”

Julie Mehretu: A Mid Career Survey at The Whitney in March, 2021

 

 

 

Julie Mehretu, Retopistics: A Renegade Excavation, 2001. Ink and acrylic on canvas, 101 ½ × 208 ½ inches (257.81 × 529.59 cm). Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, Arkansas 2013.28.  © Julie Mehretu

Co-organized by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the Whitney Museum of American Art, Julie Mehretu is a midcareer survey that will unite more than seventy paintings and works on paper dating from 1996 to the present, reflecting the breadth of Mehretu’s multilayered practice. Born in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, in 1970 and based in New York City, Mehretu has created new forms and found unexpected resonances by drawing on the histories of art and human civilization. Her play with scale and technique, as evident in intimate drawings, large canvases, and complex forms of printmaking, will be explored in depth.

Julie Mehretu at The Whitney. Image taken from Zoom press preview courtesy of The Whitney

Filling the Whitney’s entire fifth floor gallery, the exhibition will take advantage of the expansive and open space to create dramatic vistas of Mehretu’s often panoramic paintings. The first-ever comprehensive survey of Mehretu’s career, Julie Mehretu is organized by Christine Y. Kim, curator of contemporary art at LACMA, with Rujeko Hockley, assistant curator at the Whitney. The installation at the Whitney is overseen by Hockley and on view from March 25 through August 8, 2021.

Continue reading “Julie Mehretu: A Mid Career Survey at The Whitney in March, 2021”

The Whitney presents First Solo Museum Exhibition, Salman Toor: How Will I Know

 

 

 

Image credit: Salman Toor, Four Friends, 2019. Oil on plywood, 40 × 40 in. (101.6 × 101.6 cm). Collection of Christie Zhou. © Salman Toor. Image courtesy the artist and Luhring Augustine, New York

Salman Toor’s first solo museum exhibition—originally scheduled to open in March 2020 but postponed due to the pandemic—will be presented by the Whitney Museum of American Art from November 13, 2020 to April 4, 2021. Primarily making intimate oil-on-panel works, Toor expands the tradition of figurative painting by melding sketch-like immediacy with disarming detail to create affecting views of young, queer Brown men living in New York City and South Asia. Salman Toor: How Will I Know is part of the Whitney’s emerging artists program, which most recently included solo shows by Kevin Beasley and Eckhaus Latta, and will be on view in the first-floor John R. Eckel, Jr. Foundation Gallery, which is accessible to the public free-of-charge.

Continue reading “The Whitney presents First Solo Museum Exhibition, Salman Toor: How Will I Know”

Working Together: The Photographers of The Kamoinge Workshop to Open at The Whitney

 

 

 

Ming Smith, America seen through Stars and Stripes, New York City, New York, printed ca. 1976. Gelatin silver print, sheet: 15 3/4 × 20 in. (40.01 × 50.8 cm), image: 12 1/2 × 18 1/2 in. (31.75 × 46.99 cm). Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Adolph D. and Wilkins C. Williams Fund, 2016.241. © Ming Smith

The much anticipated exhibition, Working Together: The Photographers of the Kamoinge Workshop will finally unveil at The Whitney on November 21st. This groundbreaking exhibition features over 150 photographs by fourteen early members of the Kamoinge Workshop, nine of whom are living and working today.

Continue reading “Working Together: The Photographers of The Kamoinge Workshop to Open at The Whitney”

‘Around Day’s End: Downtown New York, 1970-1986’ at The Whitney

 

 

 

Gordon Matta-Clark (1943-1978), Days End Pier 52.3 (Documentation of the action “Day’s End” made in 1975 in New York, United States), 1975, printed 1977. Gelatin silver print: sheet, 8 × 10 in. (20.3 × 25.4 cm); image, 7 × 9 3/4 in. (17.8 × 24.8 cm). Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; gift of Harold Berg 2017.134. © 2020 Estate of Gordon Matta-Clark / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

The exhibition pays homage to Gordon Matta-Clark’s legendary Day’s End (1975) and features works by twenty-two artists who engaged with the Meatpacking District and West Side piers, among other downtown Manhattan locations, in the 1970s and early 1980s. Around Day’s End also anticipates David Hammons’s monumental public artwork Day’s End,  located directly across from the Whitney Museum in Hudson River Park. Drawn primarily from the Whitney’s collection, the exhibition is organized by Laura Phipps, assistant curator, with Christie Mitchell, senior curatorial assistant, and runs through October 25, 2020.

Continue reading “‘Around Day’s End: Downtown New York, 1970-1986’ at The Whitney”

Pope L ~ Public Art Fund ~ Whitney Museum ~ MoMA ~ a Trio of Exhibitions

 

 

 

POPE.L., The Great White Way, 22 miles, 9 years, 1 street, 2000-2009, Performance © Pope.L Courtesy of the artist and Mitchell-Innes & Nash, New York (and Public Art Fund)

Pope.L: Instigation, Aspiration, Perspiration, is a trio of exhibitions organized by The Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, and Public Art Fund. Utilizing both public and private spaces, the expansive presentation addresses many elements of the artist’s oeuvre, from singular early works to a monumental new installation and a new large-scale performative work inspired by the artist’s iconic crawl series on the streets of New York City. Let’s begin there, with the Public Art Fund and Pope. L: conquest on September 21, 2019.

Continue reading “Pope L ~ Public Art Fund ~ Whitney Museum ~ MoMA ~ a Trio of Exhibitions”

Jason Moran (and friends) at The Whitney Museum of Art

 

 

 

Image courtesy of The Whitney Museum of Art

The first solo museum show of Jason Moran (b. 1975, Houston, Texas), the interdisciplinary artist who grounds his work in music composition, has made its debut at the Whitney. The exhibition, Jason Moran, presents the range of art Moran has explored, from his sculptures and drawings to collaborations with visual artists to performance and video.

Continue reading “Jason Moran (and friends) at The Whitney Museum of Art”