NYAB Venue - The Whitney Museum of American Art

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The Whitney Museum of American Art (The Whitney )

Museum in The Upper East Side area

The Whitney Museum houses one of the world's foremost collections of twentieth-century American art. The Permanent Collection of some 12,000 works encompasses paintings, sculptures, multimedia installations, drawings, prints, and photographs—and is still growing. The Museum was founded in 1931 with a core group of 700 art objects, many of them from the personal collection of founder Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney; others were purchased by Mrs. Whitney at the time of the opening to provide a more thorough overview of American art in the early decades of the century. Mrs. Whitney favored the art of the revolutionary artists derisively called the Ashcan School, among them John Sloan, George Luks, and Everett Shinn, as well as realists such as Edward Hopper and American Scene painters John Steuart Curry and Thomas Hart Benton. Her initial gift, however, also comprised many important works by early modernists—Stuart Davis, Charles Demuth, Charles Sheeler, Max Weber, and others. Virtually all the works collected by the Museum for the next twenty years came through the generosity of Mrs. Whitney.

Although the Whitney's acquisition budget was always rather modest, the Museum made the most of its resources by purchasing the work of living artists, particularly those who were young and not well known. It has been a long-standing tradition of the Whitney to purchase works from the Museum's Annual and Biennial exhibitions, which began in 1932 as a showcase for recent American art. A number of the Whitney's masterpieces came from these exhibitions, including works by Arshile Gorky, Stuart Davis, Reginald Marsh, Philip Guston, and Jasper Johns. Even today, the Museum continues to enrich its Permanent Collection via the Biennial; among the recent acquisitions are works by Mike Kelley, Matthew Barney, Louise Bourgeois, Zoe Leonard, Matthew Ritchie, and Shahzia Sikander.

Following Mrs. Whitney's death in 1942, and the death of the Museum's first director, Juliana Force, in 1948, it became evident that to keep pace with the burgeoning artistic activity in the United States, the Whitney needed to substantially augment its acquisition funds. In 1956, a group of supporters formed the Friends of the Whitney Museum of American Art. This organization was led by ardent collectors and benefactors of American art: Seymour H. Knox, Mrs. Albert List, Milton Lowenthal, Roy R. Neuberger, Duncan Phillips, Nelson A. Rockefeller, David M. Solinger, and Hudson D. Walker. The Friends were responsible for acquiring some of the most spectacular paintings and sculptures represented in the collection. Without works such as Edward Hopper's Second Story Sunlight, David Smith's Lectern Sentinel, Franz Kline's Mahoning, Willem de Kooning's Door to the River, and Stuart Davis' The Paris Bit, as well as more than a hundred others purchased by the Friends, the Whitney's collection would be far less significant today, particularly in the field of abstract art.

In addition to Mrs. Whitney's donations, the Museum's holdings have been greatly enriched through the generous gifts of other major collectors.

Current or Upcoming Events

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  Robert Mapplethorpe "Polaroids: Mapplethorpe"
  Closes in 31 days

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  Buckminster Fuller "Starting with the Universe"
  Closes in 45 days

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  Paul McCarthy "Central Symmetrical Rotation Movement Three Installations"
  Closes in 66 days

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  "Progress" Exhibition
  Closes in 115 days

» Browse the past events for this venue