The Whitney Museum of American Art

Since its inception in 1931, the Whitney has championed American art and artists by assembling a rich permanent collection and featuring a rigorous and varied schedule of exhibition programs. By emphasizing seminal artists and artworks from the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, the museum organizes important exhibitions both from their holdings and from the collections of individuals and institutions worldwide.

Exhibitions range from historical surveys and in-depth retrospectives of major twentieth-century and contemporary artists to group shows introducing young or relatively unknown artists to a larger public. The Biennial, an invitational show of work produced in the preceding two years, was introduced by Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney in 1932. It is the only continuous series of exhibitions in the country to survey recent developments in American art. The Whitney also presents acclaimed exhibitions of film and video, architecture, photography, and new media.

The Whitney’s collection includes over 21,000 works created by more than 3,000 artists in the United States during the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. At its core are Museum founder Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney’s personal holdings, totaling some 600 works when the Museum opened in 1931.