David Adamo
Richard Aldrich
Michael Asher
Tauba Auerbach
Nina Berman
Huma Bhabha
Josh Brand
The Bruce
High Quality Foundation
James Casebere
Edgar Cleijne
Ellen Gallagher
Dawn Clements
George Condo
Sarah Crowner
Verne Dawson
Julia Fish
Roland Flexner
Suzan Frecon
Maureen Gallace
Theaster Gates
Kate Gilmore
Hannah Greely
Jesse Aron Green
Robert Grosvenor
Sharon Hayes
Thomas Houseago
Alex Hubbard
Jessica Jackson Hutchins
Jeffrey Inaba
Martin Kersels
Jim Lutes
Babette Mangolte
Curtis Mann
Ari Marcopoulos
Daniel McDonald
Josephine Meckseper
Rashaad Newsome
Kelly Nipper
Lorraine O'Grady
R.H. Quaytman
Charles Ray
Emily Roysdon
Aki Sasamoto
Aurel Schmidt
Scott Short
Stephanie Sinclair
Ania Soliman
Storm Tharp
Tam Tran
Kerry Tribe
Piotr Uklański
Lesley Vance
Marianne Vitale
Erika Vogt
Pae White
Robert Williams
Francesco Bonami
Gary Carrion-Murayari
Eleven of the 55 artists have appeared in previous biennials and 52 percent of those artists are women. The Biennial is the Whitney's panoramic signature survey of the latest in American art. It includes a blend of well established artists together with a predominance of emerging artists from all over the country. Curators Bonami and Carrion-Murayari noted, "The Whitney Biennial continues to reflect the way in which art is shaped by the particular historical moment in which it was created. The artists selected for this year's exhibition reflect diverse responses to the anxiety and optimism of the past two years. 2010 does not privilege any one medium or aesthetic style, but rather assembles a wide range of individual gestures, personal histories".
Curators: Francesco Bonami and Gary Carrion-Murayari
The Whitney Museum of American Art today announced the list of
artists participating in the upcoming Whitney Biennial, 2010, which takes over the Museum from February
25 through May 30, 2010. This is the 75th in the ongoing series of Biennials and Annuals presented by
the Whitney since 1932, two years after the Museum was founded.
The fifty-five artists were selected by curator Francesco Bonami and associate curator Gary Carrion-
Murayari. (A video by Pierce Jackson features the curators, seen in various locations throughout the
Museum, reading out the names of the artists. Please visit whitney.org to view the video.)
Curators Bonami and Carrion-Murayari noted, "The Whitney Biennial continues to reflect the way in which
art is shaped by the particular historical moment in which it was created. The artists selected for this
year’s exhibition reflect diverse responses to the anxiety and optimism of the past two years. 2010 does
not privilege any one medium or aesthetic style, but rather assembles a wide range of individual gestures,
personal histories, and improvised encounters that speak to a sense of openness and community."
The Biennial is the Whitney’s panoramic signature survey of the latest in American art. It includes a blend
of well established artists together with a predominance of emerging artists from all over the country. Their
works range from film and video to photography, painting, sculpture, drawing, installation, performance,
and architecture. Performances and events will take place at the Museum throughout the course of the
show. This year the events and performances are concentrated on Friday evenings in both the Lobby
Gallery and Lower Gallery. A 2010 Biennial artist, Martin Kersels, is creating a sculptural installation in the
Lobby Gallery that also functions as a stage for curatorial programs involving artists, writers, musicians,
choreographers, and DJs.
Eleven of the artists have shown in past Whitney Biennials: James Casebere and George Condo in the
1980s, Suzan Frecon in 2000, Hannah Greely in 2006, Robert Grosvenor in the 1960s and 70s, Martin
Kersels in 1997, Jim Lutes in 1987, Ari Marcopoulos in 2002, Josephine Meckseper in 2006, Charles Ray
several times in the 1980s and 90s; Ray, who also had a solo retrospective at the Whitney in 1998, makes
a departure from his previous work with his installation in 2010. Ellen Gallagher had a Whitney solo show,
DeLuxe, a series of works on paper, in 2005, and was in the 1995 Biennial; this time she is partnering with
the Dutch artist Edgar Cleijne on a film installation that includes sculptural construction and silk-screened
panels. Michael Asher, well known as a West Coast pioneer of conceptual art, was in the Whitney’s
seminal Anti-Illusion show in 1969.
Piotr Uklański had a solo show at the Whitney, in 2007, presenting his first film, Summer Love (a booze
and blood-soaked revisionist Western); Uklański’s work in 2010 is a theatrical installation involving
textiles. Kerry Tribe, a graduate of the Whitney’s Independent Study Program in 1998, was featured in the
Whitney’s group exhibition Down by Law (2006); her Biennial work is a film installation using historic and
invented storylines dealing with memory and brain function. Verne Dawson, represented in the Biennial
with a large-scale figurative painting, was also shown at the Whitney in Down by Law. Babette Mangolte,
well known as a filmmaker and as the cinematographer on a number of key films by Yvonne Rainer and
Chantal Akerman (including Akerman’s Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles), was
included in the Whitney exhibition The American Century; her Biennial contribution is a mixed media
installation involving photography and a video that recreates an earlier installation from 1978.
Nina Berman is a photojournalist and author of the book Purple Hearts: Back from Iraq (Trolley, 2004),
a collection of portraits and interviews with twenty veterans of the Iraq War; a member of the photo
collective NOOR, based in Amsterdam, Berman’s works in the Biennial are photographs depicting the
life of a returning veteran. Sarah Crowner, a painter who works with the legacy of hard-edged geometric
abstraction from the 1950s and 60s, employs both original and appropriated compositions as patterns and
templates to construct her paintings. Roland Flexner’s contribution to 2010 is thirty small-scale Sumi ink
drawings.
Maureen Gallace creates compositions depicting the vernacular architecture and landscape of rural New
England, reminiscent of images of small-town America by Edward Hopper and Fairfield Porter; her work
was the subject of Focus: Maureen Gallace at The Art Institute of Chicago in 2006. Jessica Jackson
Hutchins’s work in the Biennial is in the form of sculpture, including ceramics, found furniture, collage,
and newspaper. Jeffery Inaba, director of C-Lab, an architecture, policy, and communications think tank
at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation, is creating an
architectural intervention for the Biennial.
Rashaad Newsome, an artist from New Orleans, makes videos involving dancers and dealing with
African-American cultural markers. Lorraine O’Grady is an artist and critic whose installations,
performances, and texts address issues of diaspora, hybridity, and female subjectivity; her Biennial work
is an installation of photographs and photo-collage that deals with issues of appropriation and cultural
identity. R.H. Quaytman’s contribution to the Biennial is a multiple-painting installation dealing with
architecture and the history of the Whitney itself.
Aki Sasamoto, a young Japanese-born artist who lives in Brooklyn, is creating an installation that will
include large and small sculptures, sound, and a series of performances that will take place throughout
the run of the Biennial. Tam Tran, a Vietnam-born artist who lives and works in Memphis, is showing
photographs dealing with ideas of childhood and self-discovery. Pae White, who works in sculpture and
installation, often using cardboard cut-outs, delicate wire constructions, suspended mobiles, or evocative
wall paintings, had a solo exhibition at the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, in 2004; her work in the
Biennial is a large "smoke" tapestry.
Permanent Collection Exhibition: Collecting Biennials
As a prelude, counterpoint, and coda to the Biennial, the Museum’s fifth floor is devoted to artists in
the Whitney’s collection whose works were shown in Biennials over the past eight decades. Collecting
Biennials, opening on January 16, is installed as a kind of historical survey within the Biennial,
underscoring the importance of previous Biennial exhibitions in the Museum’s history and the formation
of its collection. A new work by one of the artists in 2010, George Condo, is also included in the mix.
Collecting Biennials begins nearly six weeks before the rest of the Biennial and remains on view until
July 2010.
Included in Collecting Biennials are such well known artists as Richard Artschwager, Milton Avery,
Matthew Barney, Ashley Bickerton, Peter Blume, Lee Bontecou, Vija Celmins, Bruce Connor, Willem
de Kooning, Richard Diebenkorn, Robert Gober, Philip Guston, David Hammons, Duane Hanson, Eva
Hesse, Edward Hopper, Jasper Johns, Mike Kelley, Liz Larner, Sherrie Levine, Glenn Ligon, Sylvia
Plimack Mangold, Robert Morris, Cady Noland, Claes Oldenburg, Paul Pfeiffer, Jackson Pollock, Richard
Prince, Robert Rauschenberg, Charles Ray, Ad Reinhardt, Mark Rothko, Ed Ruscha, Julian Schnabel,
Cindy Sherman, George Tooker, Cy Twombly, Andy Warhol, and Sue Williams.
The Bucksbaum Award: Tenth Anniversary
Melva Bucksbaum, a Whitney trustee since 1996, launched The Bucksbaum Award in 2000. In addition to
Omer Fast, who received the award in 2008 and has an exhibition titled Nostalgia on view at the Whitney
now through February 14, 2010, the previous recipients are Paul Pfeiffer (2000), Irit Batsry (2002),
Raymond Pettibon (2004), and Mark Bradford (2006). The Bucksbaum Award, created and produced
by Tiffany & Co., is given every two years in recognition of an artist, chosen from those included in the
Biennial, whose work demonstrates a singular combination of talent and imagination. The selected artist
is considered by the jurors to have the potential to make a lasting impact on the history of American art,
based on the excellence of past work as well as present work in the Biennial. In addition to receiving a
$100,000 grant, each Bucksbaum laureate is invited to present an exhibition at the Whitney, sometime
within the succeeding two years. The recipient of the 2010 Bucksbaum Award will be announced during
the course of the Biennial; a publication marking the tenth anniversary of the award will be issued in April.
Public Programs: My Turn
A series of My Turn programs will take place on six Friday evenings during the Biennial. My Turn, a
Whitney program which began in summer 2009, invites artists to create events that are an extension of
their process and method. Taking their work on view as a point of departure, six Biennial artists, including
Martin Kersels, Ari Marcopoulos, and Aki Sasamoto, among others, will explore a key aspect of their
practice to create distinctive evenings of performance, discussion, demonstration, and engagement.
Biennial Video Series
For 2010, the Whitney will produce thirty-five short videos, directed by Pierce Jackson, exploring five
main areas of the exhibition: the curators, the artists, parties and performances, the production of the
show, and visitor reactions. This content will be available on whitney.org, YouTube, Blip.tv, iTunes, and
other outlets. The first videos in the series will introduce the Biennial curators and the practices and
personalities of various Biennial artists.
Catalogue
A catalogue, edited by curators Francesco Bonami and Gary Carrion-Murayari, accompanies the
exhibition. In addition to full-color reproductions of the selected artists’ work and an essay by the curators,
the book includes brief entries by a number of writers on the represented artists’ techniques, influences,
and recent work. A detailed appendix features photographs of previous installations and a chronological
list of artists included in past Whitney Biennials. Thumbnails of previous catalogue covers are also
included, positioning each exhibition as a snapshot of artistic practice at a particular moment. The book,
designed by the award-winning design firm Project Projects, is published by the Whitney and distributed
by Yale University Press.
Image: Pae White, Smoke Knows, 2009. Photo: Fredrik Nilsen
Press contact
Stephen Soba, Molly Gross
Tel. (212) 570-3633 Fax (212) 570-4169 pressoffice@whitney.org
VIP Opening Cocktail Reception: Tuesday, February 23, 2010 h 7 PM
Join us for cocktails and to celebrate the opening of 2010, the Whitney Biennial on Wednesday, February 24, 2010 h 7pm
The Whitney Museum of American Art is located at 945 Madison Avenue at 75th Street, New York City.
Museum hours are: Wednesday, Thursday, Saturday, and Sunday from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m., Friday from 1 p.m. to 9 p.m., closed Monday and Tuesday.
General admission: $18.
Full-time students and visitors ages 19–25 and 62 & over: $12. Visitors 18 & under and Whitney members: FREE. Admission to the Kaufman Astoria Studios Film & Video Gallery only: $6. Admission is pay-what-you-wish on Fridays, 6–9 pm.