Whitney Museum of American Art

Why go

The emphasis on living artists makes the Whitney a useful choice for following American art as an ongoing practice. Paintings share the institution’s scope with sculpture, photography, film, video and new media. The terraces provide a different visual register after the galleries, placing the museum’s contemporary focus alongside the river and reused industrial neighborhood outside.

What to look for

• Hudson-facing terraces place the surrounding city and river within the visit.
• The collection spans painting, sculpture, photography, film and new media.
• The Gansevoort Street building stands within the Meatpacking District.

The full story

Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney was a sculptor and patron before founding the museum. Her Whitney Studio Club, created in 1918, promoted American artists who lacked recognition, including work outside prevailing tastes. When the Metropolitan Museum declined a proposed gift from her collection in 1929, she moved toward establishing an institution devoted to American art. The museum opened in 1931 in converted Greenwich Village rowhouses, with Juliana Force as its first director. Later moves took it to Midtown and then Madison Avenue before the Renzo Piano building opened on Gansevoort Street in 2015. Its long-running Annual and Biennial exhibitions continued the founding interest in younger and less-established artists. That history gives the current focus on living artists a clear origin. The museum began as an argument for work that other institutions overlooked, rather than simply as another home for an already settled artistic canon.

Useful to know

• Review the current exhibitions to choose a focus within the museum’s American-art scope.
• Pair the galleries and terraces with a walk through the Meatpacking District’s market-era streets.

Your next visit

Estimated · Declared scenario and planning estimates; no live opening, weather, queue or booking service.