While it may be your last chance to see select works from this year’s #WhitneyBiennial at the Whitney, there are unlimited opportunities to experience Biennial artists throughout the NYC subway system.
As part of the Whitney’s collaboration with Metropolitan Transportation Authority - MTA, our team traveled to subway stations all over the city to highlight permanent artworks in the MTA Arts & Design collection by Biennial artists. Come along with us!
Full transit tour: https://youtu.be/jFLvWTcoShg 🚇
P.S. Can’t make it to the final days of the 6th floor of the Biennial? We’ll have some beloved Biennial alums—including Jacob Lawrence and Romare Bearden—on view in Edges of Ailey, opening September 25.
Announcing the Edges of Ailey artist list! In addition to live performances, the exhibition will feature works by over 80 visual artists.
Read more + book your tickets in advance of the September 25 opening: https://whitney.org/exhibitions/edges-of-ailey
What did video art look like in the 1970s and 80s?
Learn about Dara Birnbaum's experimental films in the Whitney's collection, including PM Magazine/Acid Rock (1982) and Technology/Transformation: Wonder Woman (1978–79), which debuted at a hair salon in SoHo. 🦸♀️
Free Second Sundays returns this coming Sunday, September 8!
In addition to free admission all day, we'll have artmaking activities, Story Times with NYPL The New York Public Library, tours, and a dance class inspired by our upcoming exhibition Edges of Ailey.
See you there! Tickets: https://bit.ly/47tGW35
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¡Los segundos domingos gratuitos vuelven el próximo domingo 8 de septiembre!
Además de entrada gratuita durante todo el día, tendremos actividades artísticas, Story Times con NYPL, visitas guiadas y una clase de danza inspirada en nuestra próxima exposición Fronteras de Ailey.
¡Nos vemos allí! Boletos: https://bit.ly/47tGW35
Glenn Ligon's Rückenfigur (2009) is back on view in our lobby!
About the neon sculpture, director Scott Rothkopf said: "There's a sense of vulnerability in this piece—you see the back of this sign in a way, these wires that dangle down. You see the fragile connections between these letters, which I think suggests the sense of America, this country, as a confederacy that's both united and sometimes divided. And I think that all of those things, in a way, function metaphorically for where this country is at this moment."
Visit our first floor—including the lobby gallery and Whitney Shop—any time during Museum hours to see this work for free.
Get your dancing shoes on! Edges of Ailey is coming to the Whitney very soon. Follow along in our Instagram Stories as we count down the 25 days of Ailey leading up to the exhibition's opening on September 25.
Edges of Ailey is the first large-scale museum exhibition to celebrate the life, dances, influences, and enduring legacy of visionary artist and choreographer Alvin Ailey. We can't wait for you to see it!
Get your tickets now: https://whitney.org/exhibitions/edges-of-ailey
"What does it mean to belong to a country whose very existence is precipitated on the oppression of your people?"—Kiyan Williams
In a very special edition of our podcast minisode series, teens from the Whitney's Youth Insights (YI) Leaders program interviewed 2024 #WhitneyBiennial artist Kiyan Williams. The teens talk to Williams about what the artist's two sculptures mean especially when seen together and at this particular moment in time.
Listen to the full minisode: https://whitney.org/podcast/minisodes
A brand new work has arrived on our billboard! Across from the Museum on the facade on Horatio Street is a new commission by Raque Ford.
A little space for you right under my shoe (2024) uses an excerpt from a poem by Ford that invokes the conflicted feelings that can come with romantic longing and desire for connection with others—when holding someone close can teeter on crushing them.
Ford plays with the scale and site-specificity of the billboard, as the imposing image of stomping shoes hovers over the pedestrian viewer below.
Read more about this work, which is on view through March 2025: https://whitney.org/exhibitions/raque-ford
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Installation by North Shore Neon
As part of the 2024 #WhitneyBiennial, People Who Stutter Create mobilized the Whitney's exhibition billboard at 95 Horatio Street, across the street from the Museum and the south end of the High Line.
The artists, all of whom stutter, created this public artwork that celebrates the transformational space of dysfluency, a term that can encompass stuttering and other communication differences. In this podcast minisode, we hear from all five artists about their artwork titled Stuttering Can Create Time.
Listen to the full episode at the link in our profile, and catch the billboard before it goes off view at the end of this weekend: https://whitney.org/podcast/minisodes
Speakers:
Jia Bin
Delicia Daniels
JJJJJerome Ellis
Conor Foran
Kristel Kubart
This painting by Eldzier Cortor recently entered the Whitney's collection and along with it came a fascinating story.
Curator Jennie Goldstein gives us some background on Day Clean (c. 1945–1946) and how it came to the Whitney. You can now see this work in our seventh floor collection galleries.
Sunset with CENTO 🧡🌇
If you're heading to our outdoor terraces this Free Friday Night, be sure to visit CENTO, @nancybakercahill's AR creature on view on your phone.
Download Baker Cahill's 4th Wall mobile app to meet CENTO, and add your own feathers to the creature's body. Each of the 12 feathers you can choose in the app is associated with a different functionality related to the creature's evolutionary survival, such as communication, navigation, energy conversion, or memory bank.
Read more about the project, hear from the artist, and see how CENTO has grown through visitor participation: https://whitney.org/exhibitions/cento
Because we're in the dog days of summer, let's have a look at a Whitney collection favorite: Jared French's State Park (1946). Educator (and movie star!) @laurenridloff explains some of the symbolism in the painting in American Sign Language.
Next time you visit the Museum be sure to check out French's painting in our seventh floor collection galleries.
Watch the progression of Eddie Rodolfo Aparicio's Paloma Blanca Deja Volar/White Dove Let us Fly (2024) as it has evolved over the course of the #WhitneyBiennial.
The work is made primarily from modified amber, a petrified form of tree resin. "The amber material is something I've been working on for a while and it's the interior fluids of the pine tree," Aparicio told us, "And it's been altered to try to remove all of the things inside of it that make it fluid, that make it non-stable."
There are just a few days left to see this year's Biennial in its entirety! The exhibition closes this Sunday, August 11.
The 2024 #WhitneyBiennial is the hottest ticket in town, but don't take our word for it. Hear what visitors to this year's show are saying about the Whitney's signature exhibition.
Don't say we didn't warn you! 🚨 The Biennial is on view in its entirety only through this Sunday, August 11. Get your tickets now: https://transact.whitney.org/general-admission
"The present that we are in is upside down."—Cannupa Hanska Luger
In our podcast minisode featuring Luger, the artist talks about his 2024 #WhitneyBiennial work that takes the form of a tipi inverted and hung from the ceiling of the gallery. But Luger lets us know that, "The tipi is not upside down. The tipi is actually in the right positioning, in right relationship, in a right way in the world if the world isn't as upside down as it is presently."
Don't miss your chance to see Luger's Uŋziwoslal Wašičuta, on view in the Biennial only through this Sunday, August 11.
"For us, age didn't really necessarily come into consideration as we were selecting artists."
Ever wonder how the curators of the #WhitneyBiennial determine who will be featured in the show? 2024 Biennial co-curator Meg Onli gives us a peek inside this thought process.
This year's Biennial is on view only through August 11! Don't miss your chance.
Go behind the scenes with dancers from the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, Ailey II, and The Ailey School as they perform on our iconic outdoor terraces.
Edges of Ailey opens at the Whitney on September 25—tickets are available now! Get yours: https://whitney.org/exhibitions/edges-of-ailey
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Director: Ezra Hurwitz. Movement Director: Francesca Harper
Wishing a happy birthday to the one and only Jenny Holzer ✨
These vintage shots come from the Whitney's 2009 exhibition Jenny Holzer: PROTECT PROTECT in our previous home on Madison Avenue. Want to reminisce? Check out the full video: https://bit.ly/4dohY8j
Margo Delidow from the Whitney's Conservation team got to know Eddie Rodolfo Aparicio's Paloma Blanca Deja Volar/White Dove Let us Fly (2024) quite well during this year's #WhitneyBiennial.
The work is made primarily from modified amber, a petrified form of tree resin. "The amber material is something I've been working on for a while and it's the interior fluids of the pine tree," Aparicio told us, "And it's been altered to try to remove all of the things inside of it that make it fluid, that make it non-stable."
Watch the full video: https://bit.ly/3Wns7LD
