Essays

These essays by Whitney curators explore issues at stake in art today. Many are published in conjunction with the Museum’s emerging artist exhibitions, and some are drawn from exhibition catalogues.

2020

A painting of a bar lit in green light filled with people dancing, kissing, checking their phones, and drinking.

Salman Toor: How Will I Know

The Self as Cipher: Salman Toor’s Narrative Paintings

 

TK

Vida Americana: Mexican Muralists Remake American Art, 1925–1945

América: El Muralismo Mexicano y el Arte en Los Estados Unidos, 1925–1945

 

A painting of a person holding many flowers in front of three kneeling people.

Vida Americana: Mexican Muralists Remake American Art, 1925–1945

América: Mexican Muralism and Art in The United States, 1925–1945

2019

A purple-tinted, pixellated image of two wolves

Alan Michelson: Wolf Nation

Alan Michelson: Site Readings

 

A dark gallery with a large water tank.

Pope.L: Choir

Something from Nothing: On Pope.L’s Choir and Other Waters

 

Programmed: Rules, Codes, and Choreographies in Art, 1965–2018

Histories of the Digital Now

2018

Installation view of Kevin Beasley: A view of a landscape, with a cotton gin motor inside of a glass chamber.

Kevin Beasley: A view of a landscape

Low End Theory

 

A pregnant woman in a dress opened at the stomach walking a runway.

Eckhaus Latta: Possessed

Group Dynamics

 

A woman in a leopard suit scaling a wall

Pacha, Llaqta, Wasichay: Indigenous Space, Modern Architecture, New Art

Planos conceptuales: aproximaciones artísticas a la arquitectura indígena

 

A woman in a leopard suit scaling a wall

Pacha, Llaqta, Wasichay: Indigenous Space, Modern Architecture, New Art

Conceptual Blueprints: Artistic Approaches to Indigenous Architecture

 

Screenshot of a webchat.

Between the Waters

Between the Waters Roundtable

 

Film still of bears.

Juan Antonio Olivares: Moléculas

Juan Antonio Olivares: There Is No End

 

Installation view of Toyin Ojih Odutola: To Wander Determined

Toyin Ojih Odutola: To Wander Determined

Toyin Ojih Odutola: By Her Design

 

MPA, Amapola Prada and Elizabeth Marcus-Sonenberg, in the performance Orbit (part of the exhibition RED IN VIEW)

MPA: RED IN VIEW

Orbit Log Observations from Ground Control

2017

Abstract photograph in blue and black hues.

Willa Nasatir

Locating the Photographs of Willa Nasatir

 

Installation view of Bunny Rogers: Brig Und Ladder

Bunny Rogers: Brig Und Ladder

Remnants and Remembrance

2016

A woman in black sprawled on a marble floor

Sophia Al-Maria: Black Friday

Back to the Futurist

 

Mirror Cells

Touching From a Distance

 

Installation view of The Cannibal Actif, 2015. Ceramic, steel, chia, and carpet.

Mirror Cells

Actual Things

 

June Leaf's Coney Island, Pen and ink and colored pencil on paper.

June Leaf: Thought Is Infinite

June Leaf: Thought Is Infinite

 

Flatlands

On Unstable Ground

 

Jared Madere

Somehow Somewhere No One Is Wrong

2015

Paint swirl.

Rachel Rose: Everything and More

Room with a View

Sunrise

Sunset

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American Artist, Looted

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