Here is a look at the Whitney again:
Whitney Museum of American Art
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Coordinates: 40°46′23.70″N 73°57′50.60″W
Contents
History
In 1954, the museum left its original location[1] and moved to a small structure behind the Museum of Modern Art. On April 15, 1958 a fire on the second floor of MOMA that killed one person forced the evacuation of paintings and staff on MOMA's upper floors to the Whitney. Among the paintings moved in the evacuation was Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte which had been on loan from the Art Institute of Chicago.[3]
In 1961 the museum began seeking a site for a larger building. The Whitney settled in 1966 at the southeast corner of Madison Avenue at 75th Street in Manhattan's Upper East Side.[4] The present building, planned and built 1963–1966 by Marcel Breuer and Hamilton P. Smith in a distinctively modern style, is easily distinguished from the neighboring townhouses by its staircase façade made from granite stones and its external upside-down windows.
However, the institution has been grappling with space problems for decades.[5] From 1973 to 1983 the Whitney operated its first branch at 55 Water Street, in a building owned by Harold Uris who gave the museum a lease for $1 a year. In 1983 Philip Morris installed a Whitney branch in the lobby of its Park Avenue headquarters. In 1981 the museum opened an exhibition space in Stamford, Connecticut, that was housed in Champion International Corporation.[6] In the late 1980s, the Whitney entered into arrangements with Park Tower Realty, I.B.M. and the The Equitable Life Assurance Society of the United States, setting up satellite museums with rotating exhibitions in the lobbies of their buildings.[7] Each museum had its own director, and all plans were to be approved by a Whitney committee.[6]
Since the 1980s the institution has tried to expand its landmark building, hiring star architects to design additions. But each time the effort was abandoned, either because of the cost or the design or both.[5] In order to secure additional space for the museum’s collections, then-director Thomas N. Armstrong III developed plans for a 10-story, $37.5-million addition to the Whitney’s main building. The proposed addition, designed by Michael Graves and announced in 1985, drew immediate opposition. Graves had proposed demolishing the flanking brownstones down to the East 74th Street corner for a complementary addition. After the project gradually lost the support of many of the museum’s trustees, the plans were dropped in 1989.[8] Between 1995 and 1998, the building underwent a renovation and addition by Richard Gluckman. In 2001, Rem Koolhaas was commissioned to submit two designs for a $200 million expansion; plans were dropped again in 2003,[9] causing director Maxwell L. Anderson to resign.[10] New York restaurateur, Danny Meyer opened Untitled, a restaurant in the museum in March 2011. The space is designed by the Rockwell Group.[11]
The Whitney is developing a new main building designed by Renzo Piano at the Meatpacking District in lower Manhattan. The new museum at the intersection of Gansevoort and Washington Streets, built on a previously city-owned site[5] at the entrance to the High Line, will mark the southern entrance to the High Line (New York City) park. Construction began in 2010 and is expected to be completed by 2015.[4] The only permanent artwork commissioned for the site — its four main elevators — were conceived by Richard Artschwager.[12] The museum says it needs to raise $760 million for the 200,000-square-foot (19,000 m2) meatpacking building and its endowment. In May 2011 the Metropolitan Museum of Art announced it had entered into an agreement to occupy the Madison Avenue building for at least eight years starting in 2015 easing the Whitney of the burden of having to finance two large museums.[13]
Collection
The original 600 works in the permanent collection grew to about 1,300 by 1954 when the second Museum building opened, and to approximately 2,000 with the opening of the Breuer building in 1966. Today the permanent collection contains more than 18,000 works of art from many renowned artists. Artists represented include Josef Albers, Donald Baechler, Thomas Hart Benton, Lucile Blanch, Louise Bourgeois, Charles Burchfield, Alexander Calder, Greg Colson, Dan Christensen, Ronald Davis, Stuart Davis, Richard Diebenkorn, Arthur Dove, William Eggleston, Helen Frankenthaler, Arshile Gorky, Keith Haring, Grace Hartigan, Marsden Hartley, Robert Henri, Eva Hesse, Hans Hofmann, Edward Hopper, Jasper Johns, Franz Kline, Willem de Kooning, Lee Krasner, Ronnie Landfield, John Marin, Knox Martin, John McCracken, John McLaughlin, Robert Motherwell, Bruce Nauman, Louise Nevelson, Barnett Newman, Kenneth Noland, Jackson Pollock, Maurice Prendergast, Kenneth Price, Robert Rauschenberg, Man Ray, Mark Rothko, Morgan Russell, Albert Pinkham Ryder, Cindy Sherman, John Sloan, Paul Pfeiffer, Andy Warhol, and hundreds of others. A photography collection was begun in 1991.
Artport
In addition to its traditional collection the Whitney has a website, called Artport, that features "Net Art" that changes monthly.Deaccessioning
The Whitney Museum of American Art will not sell any work by a living artist because it could damage that artist’s career. But it will trade a living artist’s work for another piece by the same artist.[15]Library
The Frances Mulhall Achilles Library is a research library originally built on the collections of books and papers of founder Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney, and the Whitney Museum’s first director, Juliana Force. The Library currently operates in the West Chelsea area of New York City.[1]The Library in West Chelsea contains Special Collections, and the Whitney Museum Archives. The Whitney Museum Archives[2] contains the Institutional Archives, Research Collections, and Manuscript Collections.
The Library’s Special Collections consist of artists’ books, portfolios, photographs, titles in the Whitney Fellows Artist and Writers Series (1982–2001), posters, and valuable ephemera that relate to the Museum’s permanent collection. The Institutional Archives exhibition records, photographs, curatorial research notes, artist's correspondence, audio and video recordings, and Trustees papers from 1912 to the present.
Highlights:
- Arshile Gorky research collection, 1920s-1990s.
- Edward Hopper research collection, 1894-2000.
Independent study program
In 1968, Ron Clark, at the age of 25, established in conjunction with the Whitney Museum of American Art an independent study program (known as the ISP or sometimes the Whitney ISP), which helped start the careers of artists, critics, and curators including Jenny Holzer, Andrea Fraser, Julian Schnabel, Kathryn Bigelow, Roberta Smith, and Félix González-Torres, as well as many other well-known and influential cultural producers. The program includes both art history and studio programs. Each year the Independent Study Program selects fourteen students to participate in the Studio Program (artists), four in the Curatorial Program (curators) and six in the Critical Studies Program (researchers). It is a one year program that includes many both visiting and hired influential artists, art historians, and critics and involves the reading of theory. Ron Clark remains director of the program.Notable alumni
- Jennifer Allora – 1998–1999
- Ashley Bickerton – 1982
- Kathryn Bigelow – 1971
- Mark Dion – 1985
- Andrea Fraser – 1986
- Renée Green – 1989
- Félix González-Torres – 1980, 1983
- Ryan Humphrey – 2005–2006
- Jenny Holzer – 1976
- Mary Kelly – 1987
- Sarah Morris – 1989–1990
- Bettina Pousttchi – 1999–2000
- Julian Schnabel – 1973
- Katharina Sieverding – 1976
- Roberta Smith – 1969
- Rirkrit Tiravanija – 1986
- Paul Pfeiffer – 1997–1998
Governance
Funding
As of March 2011, the Whitney's endowment equaled $207 million; the museum expects to raise $625 million from its capital campaign by 2015.[16] Historically, the operating performance has been essentially breakeven.[17] The museum restricts the use of its endowment fund to cover yearly operating expenses to 5 percent of the fund’s value.[5] The Whitney has historically depended on private collectors and donors for acquisitions of new art.[18] However, donations for new purchases have dropped recently, to $1.3 million in 2010 from $2.7 million in 2006.[16] In 2008, Leonard A. Lauder gave the museum $131 million, the biggest donation in the Whitney’s history.[19][20]Directors
The museum's current director is Adam Weinberg (since 2003). Former directors include Maxwell L. Anderson (1998–2003), David A. Ross (1991–1997), Thomas Armstrong III (1974–1990), and Juliana Rieser Force (1931–1948).[21]Board of Trustees
For years Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney supported the museum single-handedly, as did her daughter, Flora Whitney Miller, after her, and until 1961 its board was largely family-run. Flora Payne Whitney, served as a museum trustee, then as vice president. From 1942 to 1974 she was the museum's president and chairman after which she functioned as honorary chairman until her death in 1986. Her daughter, Flora Miller Biddle, served as its president until 1985. In 1999, her book The Whitney Women and the Museum They Made was published.[22]In 1961, the need for outside support finally forced the board to add outside trustees, including bankers Roy Neuberger and Arthur G. Altschul. David Solinger became the Whitney's first outside president in 1966.[7]
- Leonard A. Lauder, Chairman Emeritus of the Board of Trustees
- Flora Miller Biddle, Honorary Chairman of the Board of Trustees
- Robert J. Hurst, Co-Chair of the Board of Trustees
- Brooke Garber Neidich, Co-Chair of the Board of Trustees
- Neil Bluhm, President of the Board of Trustees
- Adam D. Weinberg, Alice Pratt Brown Director of the Whitney
- John Stanley, Chief Operating Officer
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