Il Whitney Museum of American Art presents its anticipated exhibition schedule through spring 2023, including the first full-length museum presentation of Meriem Bennani and Orian Barki's film 2 Lizards, the first New York retrospective of Jaune Quick-to-See Smith (Confederated Salish and Kootenai Nation ), the first U.S. Museum Survey of the Work of Josh Kline, and two exhibitions featuring works from the museum's collection featuring new acquisitions and artworks that have not been exhibited for decades.
From 24 September 2022 to January 2023
Time Management Techniques showcases photography from 1968 to 2019 by artists who examine the medium's relationship with time. Drawn from the Whitney's permanent collection, the exhibition features many recent acquisitions alongside works that have never been exhibited before. Despite using very different techniques, aesthetics and conceptual frameworks, each of the artists works against the immediacy often associated with photography to reflect a passage of time that is slowed down, expanded or non-linear. Some artists—including Darrel Ellis and Muriel Hasbun—use a personal archive, tracing back their individual and family histories to challenge the linear way these stories are often told. Others use photography for its self-referential properties. Artists such as Blythe Bohnen and Katherine Hubbard record the length and labor of making photographs, allowing the process to dictate the final form. Corin Hewitt and EJ Hill, among others, consider performance and photography together, using image to mark a moment and hint at the countless others that remain uncaptured. This exhibition is organized by Elisabeth Sherman, Assistant Curator at the Whitney Museum of American Art.
From 30 September 2022 to February 2023
2 Lizards, a film by artists Meriem Bennani (b. 1988, Rabat, Morocco; lives and works New York, NY) and Orian Barki (b. 1985, Israel; lives and works New York, NY), depicts a surrealist vision of early months of the COVID-19 pandemic as it unfolded in New York City. In the film, two anthropomorphized animated lizards play the lead role, moving through a city in the throes of a pandemic, prolonged isolation and cries for social justice reform. It highlights the helplessness and uncertainty experienced by many at that time, as well as the unexpected moments of sharing and connection. Originally released as an eight-part episodic series on Bennani's Instagram account, Whitney's presentation of 2 Lizards is the first institutional screening as a narrative film. This installation is organized by Rujeko Hockley, Arnhold Associate Curator at the Whitney Museum of American Art.
From 19 October 2022 to 5 March 2023
In the balance brings together artworks from Whitney's collection that show how sculpture can explore the domain of paint and how paint can engage with sculptural concerns. These works disrupt pre-existing ideas of what art can be and go beyond the established limits of what artists can do. Whether they spill over or sit directly on the floor, the sculptures included in this exhibition investigate color, surface and optical perception. Paintings highlight ideas such as balance and objectivity and engage with traditions with which three-dimensional art has long been associated. Artists whose work is represented in the exhibit include Edna Andrade, Jane Kaufman, Alvin Loving, Alma Thomas, Mary Ann Unger, and others. This exhibition is organized by Jennie Goldstein, Assistant Curator at the Whitney Museum of American Art.
From 4 January to 2 April 2023
Utilizing humor, intimacy, and direct address with distinct visual and sculptural forms, Every Ocean Hughes's (formerly known as Emily Roysdon; born 1977, Easton, MD; lives and works between Easton and Stockholm) current series of works are linked by the interest of the artist for transitions, thresholds, kinship, heritage and queer life. This four-part presentation at the Whitney includes a new commission for the Museum, a performance that tells a mythic story of a community of characters who have the ability to make round-trip crossings to the underworld. The commission is the third part of a multidisciplinary series inspired by the artist's training cure of death. Previous works include Help the Dead (2019), a sixty-minute musical mimicking the laboratory form, and One Big Bag (2021), a forty-minute single-channel video installation using a mobile body kit, a full bag of everyday objects that death doulas carry to care for the new dead. With no-nonsense demeanor and intense physicality, the performer guides the viewer into the largely uncharted waters of corpse care: practical, political, and spiritual. Alongside the exhibits and video is The Piers Untitled (2010–23), a photographic series that captures the piers on Manhattan's West Side as an unmarked memorial to the marginalized communities and underground cultures that once occupied this unregulated waterfront. This exhibition is organized by Adrienne Edwards, Engell Speyer Family Curator and Director of Curatorial Affairs.
From April 19 to August 2023
In spring 2023, the Whitney will present the first New York retrospective of Jaune Quick-to-See Smith (b. 1940, citizen of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Nation), a late but timely look at the work of a groundbreaking artist. Jaune Quick-to-See Smith: Memory Map brings together nearly five decades of Smith's drawings, prints, paintings and sculptures in the largest and most comprehensive exhibition of his career to date. Smith's work engages contemporary ways, from his idiosyncratic adoption of abstraction to his reflections on American Pop art and neo-expressionism. These artistic traditions are incorporated and reinvented with concepts rooted in Smith's cultural practice, reflecting his belief that her "life's work is to examine contemporary life in America and interpret it through Native ideology." Employing satire and humor, Smith's art tells stories that commonly overturn conceptions of historical narratives and illuminate the absurdities in the shaping of the dominant culture. Smith's approach importantly blurs categories and questions why certain visual languages gain recognition, historical privilege, and value. Across decades and mediums, Smith has distributed and reappropriated ideas of mapping, history, and environmentalism while incorporating personal and collective memories. The retrospective will offer new frameworks in which to consider contemporary Native American art and show how Smith led and initiated some of the most pressing dialogues about earth, racism and cultural preservation: issues at the forefront of contemporary life and art today . This exhibition is organized by Laura Phipps, Assistant Curator at the Whitney Museum of American Art, with Caitlin Chaisson, Curatorial Project Assistant.
From April 19 to August 2023
Josh Kline (born 1979, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; lives and works in New York, NY) is one of the leading artists of his generation. Kline is best known for creating immersive installations using video, sculpture, photography and design to question how emerging technologies are changing human life in the 2023st century. In spring 3, the Whitney will present the first US museum exhibition of the artist's work. Kline often uses the technologies, practices, and forms he examines—digitization, data collection, image manipulation, XNUMXD printing, commercial and political advertising, and productivity-enhancing substances—to turn them against themselves. Some of his most famous videos use early deep fake software to speculate on the meaning of truth in a time of post-truth propaganda. Inside, Kline's prescient practice focuses on work and class, exploring how today's most pressing social and political issues: climate change, automation, disease, and the weakening of democracy impact the people who make up the workforce. The exhibition will examine over a decade of the artist's work, including new installations and moving images that address the climate crisis. Premiering at the Whitney, these new sci-fi works approach the hotter and more dangerous future horizon from the perspective of the essential workers who will inevitably be left to pick up the pieces. In an era marked by mounting crises, Kline's work offers a visceral warning and reminders for a more humane future. This exhibition is organized by Christopher Y. Lew, former Curator of Nancy and Fred Poses at the Whitney Museum of American Art and current Chief Artistic Director of the Horizon Art Foundation, with McClain Groff, Curatorial Project Assistant
