Whitney Museum of American Art

Profile

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 modern ists-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 Mars h, 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 .

represented artists

Dennis Adams      Josef Albers      William Anastasi      Polly Apfelbaum      Alexander Archipenko      Richard Artschwager      Milton Avery      Luis Cruz Azaceta      Saul Baizerman      Matthew Barney      Uta Barth      Roland Barthe      Jennifer Bartlett      Jean-Michel Basquiat      Gifford Beal      Lynda Benglis      Thomas Hart Benton      Wallace Berman      Isabel Bishop      Oscar Bluemner      Jonathan Borofsky      Louise Bourgeois      Nina Bovasso      Alexander Brodsky      Hans Burkhardt      Paul Cadmus      Alexander Calder      Beth Campbell      John Chamberlain      Dawn Clements      Chuck Close      Robert Colescott      Petah Coyne      Ann Craven      Ralston Crawford      Russell Crotty      Amy Cutler      Jo Davidson      Stuart Davis      Jay DeFeo      Charles Demuth      Liz Deschenes      Mark di Suvero      Arthur Dove      Sam Durant      Jacob El Hanani      Philip Evergood      Omer Fast      Tony Feher      Lyonel Feininger      Dan Flavin      Chris Freeman      Zipora Fried      Luis Gispert      Ralph Goings      Arshile Gorky      Paul Graham      Robert Graham      Timothy Greenfield-Sanders      Red Grooms      George Grosz      Evan Gruzis      Phillip Guston      Keith Haring      Marsden Hartley      Anthony Hernandez      Edward Hopper      Roni Horn      Robert Indiana      Robert Irwin      Emily Jacir      Neil Jenney      Alfred Jensen      Jasper Johns      Ray Johnson      Deborah Kass      Alex Katz      Mike Kelley      Ellsworth Kelly      Jon Kessler      Edward Kienholz      Byron Kim      Franz Kline      Willem de Kooning      Joseph Kosuth      Lee Krasner      Shigeko Kubota      Gary Kuehn

Gaston Lachaise      Rachel Lachowicz      Louise Lawler      An-My Le      Barry Le Va      Charles LeDray      Zoe Leonard      Les Levine      David Levinthal      Roy Lichtenstein      Glenn Ligon      Richard Lindner      Morris Louis      Inigo Manglano-Ovalle      Robert Mangold      Brice Marden      John Marin      Agnes Martin      Gordon Matta-Clark      Joel Meyerowitz      Laszló Moholy-Nagy      Robert Morris      Ree Morton      Ed Moses      Elizabeth Murray      Elie Nadelman      Bruce Nauman      Alice Neel      Louise Nevelson      Barnett Newman      Isamu Noguchi      Thomas Nozkowski      Jim Nutt      Claes Oldenburg      Catherine Opie      Carl Ostendarp      Tony Oursler      Nam June Paik      Ed Paschke      Jack Pierson      Howardena Pindell      Lari Pittman      Jackson Pollock      Mel Ramos      Robert Rauschenberg      Charles Ray      Man Ray      Ad Reinhardt      Matthew Ritchie      Dorothea Rockburne      Kay Rosen      Clifford Ross      Susan Rothenberg      Mark Rothko      Michal Rovner      Morgan Russell      Alison Saar      Lucas Samaras      Kenny Scharf      Richard Serra      Charles Sheeler      Shahzia Sikander      Gary Simmons      Laurie Simmons      Kiki Smith      David Smith      Alec Soth      Raphael Soyer      Doug & Mike Starn      Frank Stella      Gary Stephan      Joel Sternfeld      Donald Sultan      Larry Sultan      Philip Taaffe      Mark Tansey      Mark Tobey      Bradley W. Tomlin      Peter Voulkos      Kara Walker      Andy Warhol      Terry Winters      Jean Xceron      Peter Young      Joe Zucker