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Jaune on Joan.
Jaune Quick-to-See Smith muses on her admiration for fellow artist Joan Mitchell, whose painting Hemlock (1956), shown here, is a treasured work in the Whitney's collection.
Smith's retrospective Memory Map is on view now through August 13.
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Archival images courtesy the Joan Mitchell Foundation. Artwork: Joan Mitchell, Hemlock, 1956. Oil on canvas, 91 x 80 in. (231.1 x 203.2 cm). Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; purchase, with funds from the Friends of the Whitney Museum of American Art 58.20. © Estate of Joan Mitchell
"Actual space is intrinsically more powerful and specific than paint on a flat surface."
Beloved American artist Donald Judd was born on this day in 1928. This untitled 1968 work from the collection is fabricated from steel and amber plexiglass and displays a complex relationship between open and enclosed volumes. The enclosed volumes can be seen through the transparent plexiglass whose amber tint also colors the space around it.
Whereas in traditional sculpture we have to imagine what fills an interior, in Judd's work we see what he called "actual space" with a literality and directness that encompasses the inside as well as the exterior.
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Donald Judd, Untitled, 1968. Stainless steel and plexiglass, 33 × 68 × 48 in. (83.8 × 172.7 × 121.9 cm). Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; purchase, with funds from the Howard and Jean Lipman Foundation, Inc. 68.36. © Judd Foundation / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
Happy from the Whitney! 🏳️🌈🏳️⚧️ We're thrilled to host a suite of events in and around the Museum throughout the month.
Discover the q***r history of the Meatpacking District, dance the night away at a party inspired by NYC's iconic ballroom culture, and get creative with artists. LGBTQ+ visitors and allies are invited to free parties, film screenings, creative workshops, performances, and more. Details:
https://whitney.org/pride-2023
It's officially Ellsworth Kelly Day! That's right—in honor of Ellsworth Kelly's centennial today, Mayor Adams has proclaimed May 31st Ellsworth Kelly Day in New York City. Celebrate by browsing Kelly works in the collection here:
https://bit.ly/3C1swK2 and watching our 3-part miniseries on Reels, up now.
On the occasion of Josh Kline: Project for a New American Century, join us for Beyond Art: Artists Making Movies next Wednesday, June 7, at 6:30 pm. The event brings together artists to share their work and discuss the possibilities and stakes of making moving image works outside of the art world.
Speakers include Makayla Bailey, Aria Dean, Catharine Czudej, Diane Severin Nguyen, Andrew Norman Wilson, and Josh Kline, who will moderate the conversation.
Join us at the Museum or online via Zoom. Details and registration:
https://bit.ly/3WIwvF6
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Josh Kline, still from Adaptation, 2019–22. 16mm film, color, sound; 10:45 min. Installation: projector, film looper, plastic tarp, house paint, plastic storage bins, and custom stand (steel, urethane resin, urethane rubber, and urethane dye). Collection of the artist; courtesy the artist and 47 Canal, New York. © Josh Kline
"I see myself as a provocateur," artist Jaune Quick-to-See Smith told Apollo: The International Art Magazine.
On the occasion of Smith's retrospective , the artist chatted with Apollo about her upbringing and early interest in artmaking, the motifs and references in her work, and what she wants visitors to take away from her Whitney exhibition.
Read the full article:
https://bit.ly/3ICFjq0
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Jaune Quick-to-See Smith photographed by Ungelbah Dávila in 2021
Got holiday weekend plans? ⛅️ Kick off summer at the Whitney this evening with Pay-What-You-Wish admission from 7 to 10 pm!
The Museum is open with regular hours through the weekend, with free admission for visitors 18 and under, as always. Tickets:
https://whitney.org/tickets
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Installation view of Jaune Quick-to-See Smith: Memory Map (Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, April 19-August 13, 2023). Photo: Filip Wolak
Fleet Week 2023 in NYC is a perfect time to remind you that we always offer free admission to active members and veterans of the U.S. military with valid ID, and to military families with dependent cards.
Read more and reserve tickets now at the link in our bio.
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Edward Hopper, (Destroyer and Rocky Shore), 1923–1924. Watercolor and graphite pencil on paper, 13 7/8 × 19 15/16 in. (35.2 × 50.6 cm). Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Josephine N. Hopper Bequest 70.1136. © Heirs of Josephine N. Hopper/Licensed by Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
Josh Kline's Personal Responsibility (2023–) is a sculptural installation set in the future, in the aftermath of climate disaster.
Borrowing their forms from the temporary shelters used by refugees and migrants in the U.S. and around the world, the tent like structures here serve as both home and workplace for different types of "essential workers"—the people who will still have to physically go into work, often at great personal risk, when those in higher-paying jobs can work from home in comfort and safety.
The installation also features Capture and Sequestration (2023), a video that centers 4 iconic commodities made from materials that powered America's rise as the world’s preeminent military, economic, and cultural power: sugar, to***co, cotton, and oil.
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Installation view of Josh Kline: Project for a New American Century (Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, April 19-August 13, 2023). Disinformation, 2023; Personal Responsibility: Keith, 2023. Photo: Ron Amstutz
In celebration of artist Ellsworth Kelly's upcoming centennial on May 31, our chief curator Scott Rothkopf gives us a quick intro to the magic of Kelly's work.
Stay tuned for more video shorts!
Ellsworth Kelly
Today's virtual tour stop on Jaune Quick-to-See Smith: Memory Map brings us to 1992. This year marked planned celebrations for the quincentennial of Christopher Columbus's landing in the Americas, provoking a powerful response from artists and activists.
Jaune Quick-to-See Smith and a group of her friends formed the Submuloc Society, making T-shirts and pins and organizing activities for anti-celebrations. "Submuloc" is "Columbus" backward and this was a goal of the society—to reverse or counter the popular stories of European contact.
During this period, Smith's incorporation of clippings from newspapers, magazines, and books recalls the methods of artists like Robert Rauschenberg, but her approach differs: she leans into, rather than away from, the cultural significance and authority that printed matter can convey. These works confront the violence of displacement and the extreme inequities of the earliest negotiations between Indigenous peoples and settlers in North America.
Don't miss , on view through August 13.
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Installation view of Jaune Quick-to-See Smith: Memory Map (Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, April 19–August 13, 2023). Trade (Gifts for Trading Land with White People), 1992. Photo: Ryan Lowry
Mother of All Demos III is part of American Artist's exploration of Black labor and visibility, as well as anti-Blackness within networked life and digital systems.
Here, a functional computer is covered in dirt and a black gooey liquid. "The shape of the computer is modeled after the Apple II," the artist said, "which was the last commercial personal computer that used this all-black interface. And I wanted to make a computer that was really rooted in this moment where Blackness served as the basis of what could be done in virtual space."
The materiality of the computer stands in stark opposition to the slickness of Silicon Valley aesthetics and highlights how design choices reflect ideologies rather than the inherent properties of digital interfaces.
Hear more from American Artist in the Refigured audio guide:
https://bit.ly/3OpWNtj. The exhibition is on view in our free first floor gallery through 3.
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Installation view of Refigured (Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, March 3–July 2023). American Artist, Mother of All Demos III, 2022. Photo: Ron Amstutz
Jaune Quick-to-See Smith collaborated with her son Neal Ambrose-Smith on this moving sculpture.
Warrior for the 21st Century periodically dances to the sound of a rattle while a voice counts to ten in the Salish language. The work is constructed of objects that, as Ambrose-Smith notes, are "all the things that you might need as a warrior for the 21st century," from aspirin and echinacea to playing cards.
The warrior also carries a copy of the 1855 Treaty of Hellgate, which established the reservation lands of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Nation, where Smith was born and returns to often; it serves as a reminder of past struggles with the federal government and the limitations of working within a colonial legal structure to protect land, water, and resources.
Just over two years ago we unveiled David Hammons's Day's End after six years of planning, preparation, fabrication, and construction.
Permanently installed in Hudson River Park's Gansevoort Peninsula, Day's End pays homage to artist Gordon Matta Clark, whose artwork of the same title involved cutting five openings into the Pier 52 shed that formerly occupied this site.
With six bays in total, the monumental sculpture measures 325 feet long—nearly the size of a football field. Fun fact: the sculpture was one of the largest public art projects completed in the U.S. in 2021.
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David Hammons, Day’s End, 2014–21. Stainless steel and precast concrete, 52 × 325 × 65 ft. (15.9 × 99 × 20 m) overall. © David Hammons. Photo: Jason Schmidt
In celebration of Jaune Quick-to-See-Smith: , we're hosting a free, day-long convening this Friday at the Museum.
The event gathers an intergenerational group of Native American artists, curators, and scholars for conversations about the ongoing and overarching concerns in Smith's work, including land, sovereignty, and Indigenous knowledge and identity.
We've just released more tickets to attend in person, or join us for a livestream on YouTube. Get all the details:
https://bit.ly/3Mxezd1
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Jaune Quick-to-See Smith, Genesis, 1993. Oil, paper, newspaper, fabric, and charcoal on canvas, two panels: 60 × 100 in. (152.4 × 254 cm) overall. High Museum of Art, Atlanta; purchase with funds provided by AT&T NEW ART/NEW VISIONS and with funds from Alfred Austell Thornton in memory of Leila Austell Thornton and Albert Edward Thornton, Sr., and Sarah Miller Venable and William Hoyt Venable. © Jaune Quick-to-See Smith. Photograph courtesy the artist and Garth Greenan Gallery, New York
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