An Opinionated Guide To The 2014 Whitney Biennial

Didn't Gothamist already post about this? Yes, we did, in fact! The excellent preview by Ben Miller would be a strong introduction if you stopped reading now. But you already clicked and the money is in the bank, so read on for a fuller picture of the show.

Fine. What is the Whitney Biennial? The Whitney Biennial is a once-every-two-years ("biennial") exhibition presented by the Whitney Museum of American Art ("Whitney") of mostly new and emerging contemporary American artists. The Whitney has been putting on large group exhibitions for nearly 100 years, but the biennial format only began in 1973. It is first and foremost an exercise in curation, and this year the Whitney invited outside curators to put together the show, culminating in its distinct format and (sometimes) unique results.

Is it fascist? Well, that depends on how you feel about museums. (At the Frick they force you to WEAR your overcoat if you decide not to check it!) But seriously, though the Biennial is mostly uncontroversial in a larger, more general sense, it is routinely the target of familiar and valid criticisms from within and without the art world. As recently as 2012 a parody Biennial website mocked the exhibition's corporate ties.

The most notable (and sustained) criticisms were made by the Guerrilla Girls, an anonymous feminist art collective formed in 1985 in New York City, active through the late 1990s, and still working today, who in 1987 protested the Biennial to draw attention to the dearth of female and minority artists in the showcase. The Guerrilla Girls Review The Whitney was held at the non-profit Clocktower gallery, where the group denounced the systemic disenfranchisement of women in the history of the Biennial up until that point (for the seven exhibitions from 1973-1987, the number of women of color in the Biennial was a statistically insignificant 0.3%"). In 1987, women were a mere 27% of artists in the Biennial.

2014s Biennial is still not immune to these criticisms: by one early estimate, roughly 30% are women and 7% are black. Is it a coincidence that this year's only female curator assembled the most diverse collection? Should I disclose that I am a white male now or later?

So? What's the big deal? However you slice it, its just one of the biggest art-world events in one of the biggest centers of the art-world in one of the most famous museums in one of the biggest cities in the United States. The Whitney Biennial exists, and you most certainly will be hearing about it.

This years Biennial is taking on a slightly different format: three curators from outside the Whitney were invited to organize their own show on one of the museum's three main floors. Anthony Elms, Stuart Comer, and Michelle Grabner took over the second, third, and fourth floors respectively. Elms is an associate curator at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Philadelphia (read a nice Q&A with him here), Comer is the Media and Performance Art Curator at the MoMa, and Grabner is an artist and professor at the Art Institute of Chicago.

Let's get to it, then! There is a lot to get through: 103 artists and groups make up the 3.5-ish floor exhibition, so this will mostly highlight the pieces I liked the most and try to provide a sense of the three distinct floors. Am I qualified to do so? No, but neither are art historians, because art history is saturated with hired bullshit.

The Second Floor Each level opens with a curator's statement summarizing their approach to their exhibition floor. Elm's guiding question for the second floor was the same one Marcel Breuer posed to himself when designing the Whitney"What should a museum look like, a museum in Manhattan?"

Walking out of the elevators your are confronted with your first piece, Jimmy Durham's Choose Any Three, a wooden totem with names of famous persons in groups of three, made during his time in Cuernavaca, Mexico. He has been living and working all over Europe since the mid-90s, and his presence foreshadows one of the floors more interesting themes: Patriotism. What is an ex-pat American artist's relationship to American contemporary art? Is he even American? Does it matter? (Yes.)

Original post:
An Opinionated Guide To The 2014 Whitney Biennial