#whitney museum

“A new owner would be free either to preserve or raze the historic building”

Home(s) of Gertrude Whitney, founder of the Whitney Museum, on the market now

“Ghosthymn (after the Raft),” 2019-21, during its creation. 

It references “The Raft of the Medusa” by Théodore Géricault but also “levels of precarity exposed by the pandemic and the embodied anxiety during those early months.”

By Julie Mehretu, in the New York Times

Museum wanderer Amber harmonizing swimmingly with Jasper Johns’ Three Flags in her snazzy Francine Dressler tee.

whitneymuseum:

“A deft, serious achievement, a signal contribution to downtown and the city’s changing cultural landscape.” —The New York Times in today’s cover story on the new Whitney.

whitneymuseum:

Wishing you a happy Fourth of July!

Installation view of Where We Are: Selections from the Whitney’s Collection, 1900–1960 (Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, April 28, 2017–). Photograph by Ian Allen

Gotta love JJ ❤️

Favorite wall @whitneymuseum right now

Andy Warhol shot hundreds of movies – short and long, silent and sound, scripted and improvised. As part of the upcoming Warhol retrospective at the Whitney, we’ll be screening a selection of his classic films! According to the New York Times, “they are films like few others, in part because, first and foremost, they are also sublime art,” Tickets to the film screenings are on sale now at whitney.org.

We remember September 11 with two Whitney Collection works by Ellsworth Kelly: Green Panel (Ground Zero) (2011) and Ground Zero (2003). Kelly imagined a large, gently sloping mound of earth covered in brilliant green grass when he conceived of a memorial Ground Zero in 2001. When the artist saw this aerial photograph of Ground Zero published in The New York Times in 2003, he was inspired to make this collage of a prospective memorial. Preserving Ground Zero as an undeveloped rectangle of green grass perfectly embodies Kelly’s interest in monochrome geometry and the landscape. When looking down from neighboring buildings on the site, viewers would see an uninterrupted expanse of color, as if looking at the ocean or sky.

[Ellsworth Kelly (1923–2015), Ground Zero, 2003. Collage on paper (newsprint). Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; gift of an anonymous donor. © Ellsworth Kelly]

[Ellsworth Kelly (1923–2015), Green Panel (Ground Zero), 2011. Painted Aluminum. Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Commissioned by the Whitney Museum of American Art. © Ellsworth Kelly]

[David Wojnarowicz (1954-1992), Untitled (Falling man and map of the U.S.A.), 1982. Screenprint: sheet, 23 15/16 x 17 7/8 in. (60.8 x 45.4 cm); image, 12 ½ x 12 ½ in. (31.8 x 31.8 cm). Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; purchase with funds from the Print Committee 2001.269. © The Estate of David Wojnarowicz and P.P.O.W. Gallery, New York]

Celebrate Labor Day with American art at the Whitney! Experience iconic works from the Whitney collection, including this painting of Lancaster’s industrial architure by Charles Demuth on view in Where We Are: Selections from the Whitney’s Collection, 1900–1960.

[Charles Demuth (1883‑1935), Buildings, Lancaster, 1930. Oil and graphite pencil on composition board, 24 1/8 × 20 1/8in. (61.3 × 51.1 cm). Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; gift of an anonymous donor 58.63]

COMING SOON! Programmed: Rules, Codes, and Choreographies in Art, 1965–2018 spans over sixty years of conceptual, video, and computational art.

[Nam Jun Paik (1932–2006), Fin de Siecle II, 1989. Video installation, 207 television sets with seven video channels, 168 x 480 x 60 in. (426.7 x 1219.2 x 152.4 cm). The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Gift of Laila and Thurston Twigg-Smith 93.129]

Hear from Tom Kalin of the AIDS activist collective Gran Fury on the American Policy series by Hock E Aye VI Edgar Heap of Birds. Their works are on view in the exhibition An Incomplete History of Protest through Monday, August 27. Watch the full video on whitney.org.

ITSOFOMO (In the Shadow of Forward Motion) is a multimedia performance that David Wojnarowicz made in collaboration with composer and musician Ben Neill in 1989. Integrating music, text, and video in a multi-dimensional format, the work embodies the act of acceleration and its sensory manifestations. It is through this frame that Wojnarowicz addressed the accelerating AIDS crisis and the politics of AIDS in the United States at that moment.

The work debuted at The Kitchen in 1989 and has not been performed live in New York in 25 years. This September, Ben Neill and the percussionist Don Yallech, who played alongside Neill and Wojnarowicz in 1989, revisit this fierce meditation on history and power at the Whitney Museum.

Visitwhitney.org for tickets.

[Image courtesy Ben Neill]

FINAL DAYS! See 80 years of art at its most urgent in An Incomplete History of Protest—on view through August 27. 

[May Stevens (b. 1924), Dark Flag, 1976, from the series “Big Daddy” Paintings, 1967-76. Acrylic on canvas, 60 1/8 × 60 1/8 in. (152.7 × 152.7 cm). Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; gift of the artist 2005.34. © May Stevens. Courtesy the artist and RYAN LEE Gallery, New York]

The artists who made the furniture and display elements in the exhibition Eckhaus Latta: Possessed are part of Mike Eckhaus and Zoe Latta’s close cohort of friends, mentors, and family members. Learn more about the exhibition on whitney.org!

[Installation view of Eckhaus Latta: Possessed (Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, August 2-October 8, 2018). From left to right, front to back: Nora Jane Slade, Criss cross bamboosauce, 2018; Riley O’Neill, Basil’s tissue scaffold, 2018; Susan Cianciolo, Textile Curtain for dressing room, 2017-18; Lauren Davis Fisher, Friendshuh Prototypes, 2018; Sophie Stone, Untitled (Dressing Room Rug), 2018; Amy Yao, Farmer John, 2018; Torey Thornton, Benching Hierarchy Console (EL), 2018; Martine Syms, Taurus, 2018; Susan Cianciolo, Dress Mirror frame, 2017-18; Eckhuas Latta, Beaded Curtain, 2018. Photograph by Jason Mandella]

“What we call reality is an agreement that people have arrived at to make life more livable."— Louise Nevelson. See her drawings and prints in the exhibition Louise Nevelson: The Face in the Moon, now on view at the Whitney.

[Louise Nevelson (1899-1988), Portrait, 1953-55. Aquatint and etching: sheet, 24 1/8 × 19 ¼ in. (61.3 × 48.9 cm); plate, 19 5/8 × 15 7/8 in. (49.9 × 40.3 cm). Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; gift of the artist 69.242. © 2018 Estate of Louise Nevelson/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York]

In his performance, The OG of Undocumented Children, artist Guadalupe Maravilla continues his ongoing investigation of the displacement of Central American people. The artist himself crossed the US border when he was eight years old, escorted by a Coyote, or human trafficker, and a dog. To share his personal story, he enlists a cast of characters, including a troupe of Quinceañeras, two singers, an immigrant vampire family who drink the blood of Americans, and the Mexican gothic electro-drama band La Rubia te Besa. Drawing parallels between Mayan mythology and current events, Maravilla pursues a new visual language for border crossing stories.

Visitwhitney.org to more about the Maravilla’s work, on view in Pacha, Llaqta, Wasichay: Indigenous Space, Modern Architecture, New Art. 

Happy birthday, Andy Warhol! The countdown begins for the artist’s monumental retrospective, Andy Warhol—From A to B and Back Again, opening November 12 at the Whitney. Visit whitney.org to purchase advanced tickets today!

Hot outside, cool inside. See works by Edward Ruscha and more from the Whitney Collection.

[Edward Ruscha (1937—), Swank, 2001, Spray-applied acrylic and dry pigment on board, 36 ¼ × 56 1/8 in. (92.1 × 142.6 cm); Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Gift of The American Contemporary Art Foundation, Inc., Leonard A. Lauder, President © Edward Ruscha]

For our latest Artport commission, The Laughing Snake, Morehshin Allahyari uses the myth of a jinn—a supernatural creature or monstrous figure in Arabian mythology—to explore the status of women and the female body in the Middle East. Visit whitney.org to enter The Laughing Snake!

Happy birthday to Whitney Collection artist Jenny Holzer! UNEX Sign #1 (Selections from the Survival Series) from 1983 is one of the artist’s earliest works to present her Truisms—one-line aphorisms written by Holzer—with LED technology, a state-of the art means of public communication for government and institutional agencies. At the time of its making, the piece’s 54 statements may have been mistaken for ads, instructions, or public announcements. In a media-saturated world in which news and ads flash by for passive viewers, Holzer uses this instrument of communication to call us to attention.

[UNEX Sign #1 (Selections from the Survival Series) (1983) installed in the Whitney’s lobby, 2015. by Ron Amstuz]

In a 1963 letter to Martin Friedman, Samuel Kootz discusses Adolph Gottlieb’s painting “Frozen Sounds,” (1951) which was exhibited at Kootz Gallery in 1952. The work is now on view as part of the exhibition “Dealer’s Choice: The Samuel Kootz Gallery 1945-1966” at the Fralin Museum of Art​ in Virginia.

From the letter:

“When Gottlieb made the first picture that was his exit from the pictograph–the painting called ‘Frozen Sounds’– I purchased the picture for my own collection (and made a gift of it to the Whitney Museum several years ago.) I was so impressed with 'Frozen Sounds’ that I gave it back to Gottlieb, and suggested to him that he build an entire show around this theme. Out of it came the Imaginary Landscapes, one of the best shows that Gottlieb has ever done, and out of which came his present 'Blast’ paintings. In these, you immediately see Gottlieb’s new feeling for color and his freedom in the use of it, thus at last bearing out my feeling that it was inevitable." 

"Frozen Sounds”
1951
Oil on canvas
36 x 48"