Whitney Biennial 2022

The Whitney Biennial is the longest-running survey of American contemporary art, typically by young and lesser-known artists, on display at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City. Starting in 1937, the Museum shifted to yearly exhibitions called Annuals. The current format which is a survey show of work in all media occurring every two years has been in place since 1973. Titled Quiet as It’s Kept, the 2022 Biennial features an intergenerational and interdisciplinary group of sixty-three artists and collectives whose dynamic works reflect the challenges, complexities, and possibilities of the American experience today. The subtitle of this Biennial is a colloquialism. The phrase is typically said prior to something -often obvious-that should be kept secret.

Co-curators David Breslin and Adrienne Edwards, both curators at the Whitney Museum, have cited the collapsed sense of time and compounding political, health, and humanitarian crises of the past three years (they began work on this biennial, which was initially due to open last year, in the comparatively calm year of 2019) as influences not only on their selection of 63 artists and collectives but also on the way their works are installed.

All of Whitney’s Biennials serve as forums for artists, and the works on view reflect their enigmas, the things that perplex them, and the critical questions they are asking. But each of the Biennials also exists as an institutional statement, and every team of curators is entrusted with making an exhibition that resides within the Museum’s history, collection, and reputation. The Biennial continues to function as an ongoing experiment in its eightieth iteration.

Whitney Biennial 2022

Whitney Biennial

Whitney Biennial

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