Whitney Museum of American Art

With more than 25,000 works by more than 3,700 American artists, the Whitney Museum is the world’s premier museum devoted to 20th and 21st century American art. Scala Archives is honored to represent the museum as its exclusive worldwide agent.

From Creation to the Biennial

In the early twentieth century, collector, patron, and sculptor Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney became aware that many avant-garde artists struggled to exhibit and sell their work in the United States. In response, in 1914 she founded an exhibition space in Greenwich Village, New York, dedicated to the promotion of contemporary American art. In 1929 she offered her collection— which by then numbered more than 500 works and devoted exclusively to American art — to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. When the donation was turned down she decided to establish her own institution. Thus, in 1931, Gertrude opened her own museum on West 8th Street.

Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney. 1916. Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, USA – WM00341

Architecture

The rapid growth of the collection created the need for a new space by the 1960s. In 1963, architect Marcel Breuer designed the new venue between Madison Avenue and 75th Street: a brutalist-style building with a stepped façade that widened towards the top. Over time, it became the architect’s most recognizable work, despite not being initially appreciated by New Yorkers.

In 2015, the Whitney relocated to the Meatpacking District in a building designed by Renzo Piano and overlooking the celebrated High Line. Inaugurated in the spring of that year, the new building for the first time provided spaces that were sufficiently large and flexible to host large-scale installations, performances, video art and the Biennial.

Whitney Museum of American Art and the Highline, corner of Gansevoort Street and Washington Street, New York, New York. Photograph by Ed Lederman – Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, USA –
WM01537

The Collection

The permanent collection — which includes works by Edward Hopper, Alexander Calder, Jasper Johns, Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, and Keith Haring to name only a few — allows for ever-changing exhibition itineraries. True to the innovative spirit of its founder, the museum devotes ample physical and conceptual space to installations, performances, and video art, with the second and third floors specifically designed as flexible theatrical spaces.

Edward Hopper, Second Story Sunlight. (1960). Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, USA - WM00095 — Edward Hopper, Second Story Sunlight. (1960). Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, USA – WM00095

Roy Lichtenstein, Little Big Painting, 1965. Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, USA - WM01626 — Edward Hopper, Second Story Sunlight. (1960). Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, USA – WM00095

The Whitney Biennial

Since 1932, when Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney conceived it as a means to give visibility to contemporary artists, the Whitney Biennial has established itself as one of the unmissable events in the international art world. Held every two years, the exhibition is traditionally dedicated to emerging artists and those who best interpret the trends of contemporary American art.

Over the decades it has anticipated movements and languages destined to shape art history, confirming the Whitney’s role as a privileged observatory on the creativity of the present.

Below you can enjoy a fantastic video on the history of the Biennial as well as views of some past Biennials.