Artist Talk Magazine - issue 11

As the preeminent institution
devoted to the art of the United
States, the Whitney Museum
of American Art presents the
full range of twentieth-century
and contemporary American
art, with a special focus on works
by living artists. The Whitney is
dedicated to collecting, preserving,
interpreting, and exhibiting
American art, and its collection—
arguably the finest holdings of
twentieth-century American art
in the world—is the Museum’s key
resource. The Museum’s flagship
exhibition, the Biennial, is the
country’s leading survey of the
most recent developments in
American art.
Innovation has been a hallmark of
the Whitney since its beginnings. It
was the first museum dedicated to
the work of living American artists
and the first New York museum
to present a major exhibition of
a video artist (Nam June Paik, in
1982). Such important figures as
Jasper Johns, Jay DeFeo, Glenn
Ligon, Cindy Sherman, and
Paul Thek were given their first
comprehensive museum surveys
at the Whitney. The Museum
has consistently purchased works
within the year they were created,
often well before the artists who
created them became broadly
recognized.
ROBERT HENRI (1865-1929),
GERTRUDE VANDERBILT WHITNEY,
WHITNEY MUSEUM OF AMERICAN ART, NEW
YORK; GIFT OF FLORA WHITNEY MILLER 86.70.3
FOUNDING
At the beginning of the twentieth
century, sculptor Gertrude
Vanderbilt Whitney saw that
American artists with new ideas
had trouble exhibiting or selling
their work. She began purchasing
and showing their artwork,
eventually becoming the leading
patron of American art from 1907
until her death in 1942.
In 1914, Mrs. Whitney established
the Whitney Studio in Greenwich
Village, where she presented
exhibitions by living American
artists whose work had been
disregarded by the traditional
academies. She had assembled
a collection of more than five
hundred pieces by 1929. After
her offer of this gift to the
Metropolitan Museum of Art
was declined, she set up her own
institution, one with a distinctive
mandate: to focus exclusively on
the art and artists of this country.
The Whitney Museum of American
Art was founded in 1930, and
opened in 1931 on West Eighth
Street near Fifth Avenue.
Following a move in 1954 to an
expanded site on West 54th
Street, the Whitney opened the
Marcel Breuer-designed building
on Madison Avenue at 75th Street
in 1963. The iconic building housed
the Museum from 1966 through
October 20, 2014. The Whitney’s
current building at 99 Gansevoort
Street opened on May 1, 2015.
The Whitney was an innovator
in taking its exhibitions and
programming beyond its own walls,
opening branch museums in other
parts of New York City and the
surrounding area. These freeof-charge,
corporate-sponsored
branches operated as standalone
spaces with their own staffs,
serving as training grounds for
curators including Thelma Golden,
Shamim Momin, Lisa Phillips, and
Debra Singer. The exhibitions and
programming at these locations
not only allowed the public more
access to the Whitney’s collection,
but also met the needs of
experimental artists by providing
large spaces and performance
opportunities. The last of the
branches closed in 2008.
PERMANENT COLLECTION
The Whitney’s collection includes
over 24,000 works created by
more than 3,500 artists in the
United States during the twentieth
and twenty-first centuries.
At its core are Museum founder
Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney’s
personal holdings, totaling some six
hundred works when the Museum
opened in 1931. These works
served as the basis for the founding
collection, which Mrs. Whitney
continued to add to throughout
her lifetime.
The founding collection reflects
Mrs. Whitney’s ardent support
of living American artists of the
time, particularly younger or
emerging ones, including Peggy
Bacon, George Bellows, Stuart
Davis, Charles Demuth, Mabel
Dwight, Edward Hopper, Yasuo
Kuniyoshi, Reginald Marsh, and
John Sloan. This focus on the
contemporary, along with a
deep respect for artists’ creative
processes and visions, has guided
the Museum’s collecting ever since.
EDWARD HOPPER (1882-1967),
(SELF-PORTRAIT), 1925-30
OIL ON CANVAS,
WHITNEY MUSEUM OF AMERICAN ART, NEW
YORK; JOSEPHINE N. HOPPER BEQUEST
70.1165. © 2019 HEIRS OF JOSEPHINE N.
HOPPER/LICENSED BY ARTISTS RIGHTS SOCIETY
(ARS), NEW YORK
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