Whitney Museum of American Art

99 Gansevoort Street
A world famous center of American Art, the Whitney Museum's Permanent Collection is situated in its new building in lower Manhattan. Designed by architect Renzo Piano and abutting the High Line park, the building vastly increases exhibition and prog... more
A world famous center of American Art, the Whitney Museum's Permanent Collection is situated in its new building in lower Manhattan. Designed by architect Renzo Piano and abutting the High Line park, the building vastly increases exhibition and programming space and provide a comprehensive view of its vast collection of modern and contemporary American art. Since the Museum's opening in 1931, the collection has grown to more than 21,000 paintings, sculptures, prints, drawings, and photographs, representing over 3,000 individual artists and providing the most complete overview of twentieth-century American art of any museum in the world. At its core are Museum founder Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney’s personal holdings, totaling some 600 works when the Museum opened in 1931. These works served as the basis for the founding collection, which Mrs. Whitney continued to add to throughout her lifetime. The founding collection reflects Mrs. Whitney’s ardent support of living American artists of the time, particularly younger or emerging ones, including Peggy Bacon, George Bellows, Stuart Davis, Charles Demuth, Mabel Dwight, Edward Hopper, Yasuo Kuniyoshi, Reginald Marsh, and John Sloan. Th... more
A world famous center of American Art, the Whitney Museum's Permanent Collection is situated in its new building in lower Manhattan. Designed by architect Renzo Piano and abutting the High Line park, the building vastly increases exhibition and programming space and provide a comprehensive view of its vast collection of modern and contemporary American art.

Since the Museum's opening in 1931, the collection has grown to more than 21,000 paintings, sculptures, prints, drawings, and photographs, representing over 3,000 individual artists and providing the most complete overview of twentieth-century American art of any museum in the world. At its core are Museum founder Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney’s personal holdings, totaling some 600 works when the Museum opened in 1931. These works served as the basis for the founding collection, which Mrs. Whitney continued to add to throughout her lifetime. The founding collection reflects Mrs. Whitney’s ardent support of living American artists of the time, particularly younger or emerging ones, including Peggy Bacon, George Bellows, Stuart Davis, Charles Demuth, Mabel Dwight, Edward Hopper, Yasuo Kuniyoshi, Reginald Marsh, and John Sloan. This focus on the contemporary, along with a deep respect for artists’ creative process and vision, has guided the Museum’s collecting ever since.

The collection begins with Ashcan School painting and follows the major movements of the twentieth century in America, with strengths in Modernism and Social Realism, Precisionism, Abstract Expressionism, Pop Art, Minimalism, Postminimalism, art centered on identity and politics that came to the fore in the 1980s and 1990s, and contemporary work. The Museum’s signature exhibition is its biennial (and annual, during certain periods) survey of contemporary art, which has always kept the focus on the present, in the spirit of its founder. The highlights of the collection are definitive examples of their type, but there is also much variety and originality in works by less well-known figures. The collection includes all mediums; over eighty percent is works on paper.

The Whitney has deep holdings of the work of certain key artists, spanning their careers and the mediums in which they worked, including Alexander Calder, Mabel Dwight, Jasper Johns, Glenn Ligon, Brice Marden, Reginald Marsh, Agnes Martin, Georgia O’Keeffe, Claes Oldenburg, Ed Ruscha, Cindy Sherman, Lorna Simpson, and David Wojnarowicz.

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Meatpacking District Description

Whitney Museum of American Art is located in the Meatpacking District neighborhood of Manhattan. The Meatpacking District owes its name to the meat distribution companies that once dominated the area. While some meatpacking houses still exist, nowadays you are more likely to find meat of the celebrity variety, twirling around the Bermuda Triangle of SoHo House, Spice Market, and the uber-swanky Hotel Gansevoort. The signature feature of this luxurious hotel is its rooftop, featuring a richly landscaped roof garden and an expansive loft with soaring 20-foot ceilings that offers breathtaking city views in three directions. A 45-foot outdoor heated pool with underwater music anchors the roof's other side; it is unique in New York and reflects the ultra-trendiness that the district prides itself on.

If it's Asian cuisine you’re craving you’ll definitely want to dine at Spice Market. The interior of the restaurant is as exotic as the cuisine: with a collection of artifacts imported from Rajastan, South India, Burma and Malaysia creating an interior of Eastern exotica including antique wall carvings, screens and pagodas. Spice Market provides a feast for all sense.

Some art galleries have opened here, but the area is dominated by late-night establishments, high-end furniture stores, and fabulously expensive hairdressers. If you seek thrilling nightlife and pulsating action on the streets with traffic jams over century-old cobblestone streets, head here Cielo is one of hottest nightclubs. Its intimate size, impressive sound and sunken dance-floor make it perfect for catching a set by the latest hipster DJ. But given its notorious reputation as one of New York's toughest club to enter, good luck getting by the door. Speaking of tough doors, you might miss APT's door entirely, as the swanky lounge resides in a nondescript building that could easily be mistaken for a butcher shop. For more nightlife action, try the glittery, subterranean club that is 675 Bar. If you're looking for a quieter, more low-key way to spend time in the district, keep in mind that one of the most pleasant times of day to visit this neighborhood is between 10 and 11 in the morning.

As you wander around the district, do head down Gansevoort Street to get a feel for how this neighborhood evolved. The now-defunct Florent restaurant was the first trendy place to open, and as you pass its old location on Gansevoort Street, you'll see the remnants of the old dilapidated elevated railway, which has been turned into America's first overhead park, called the High Line. West 14th Street between Ninth and Tenth Avenues should not be missed, replete with stylish boutiques such as Jeffrey, a few bakeries, and an enormous Bodum store as well. And then there's the legendary Old Homestead Steakhouse directly across from the new Apple Store on Ninth Avenue at West 14th Street. If you're curious about the intriguing new architecture and glass houses juxtaposed with meatpacking houses, you'll definitely want to follow this section of our new architecture of Manhattan walking tour.

Jaune Quick-to-See Smith: Memory Map

This exhibition is the first New York retrospective of Jaune Quick-to-See Smith (b. 1940, citizen of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Nation), an overdue but timely look at the work of a groundbreaking artist. Jaune Quick-to-See Smith: Memory Map brings together nearly five decades of Smith’s dr... [ + ]awings, prints, paintings, and sculptures in the largest and most comprehensive showing of her career to date.

Smith’s work engages with contemporary modes of making, from her idiosyncratic adoption of abstraction to her reflections on American Pop art and neo-expressionism. These artistic traditions are incorporated and reimagined with concepts rooted in Smith’s own cultural practice, reflecting her belief that her “life’s work involves examining contemporary life in America and interpreting it through Native ideology.” Employing satire and humor, Smith’s art tells stories that flip commonly held conceptions of historical narratives and illuminate absurdities in the formation of dominant culture. Smith’s approach importantly blurs categories and questions why certain visual languages attain recognition, historical privilege, and value.

Across decades and mediums, Smith has deployed and reappropriated ideas of mapping, history, and environmentalism while incorporating personal and collective memories. The retrospective will offer new frameworks in which to consider contemporary Native American art and show how Smith has led and initiated some of the most pressing dialogues around land, racism, and cultural preservation—issues at the forefront of contemporary life and art today.

06/07/2023 10:30 AM
Wed, June 07
10:30AM
$
Adults: $25
Seniors/Students: $18
Members: Free
Under 18: Free

Note: Pay-what-you-wish tickets are available at the admissions desk on Fridays, 7–9:30 pm. They may not be purchased in advance.
Get Tickets

Info

99 Gansevoort Street
New York, NY 10014
(212) 570-3600
Website

Editorial Rating

Admission And Tickets

Adults: $25
Seniors/Students: $18
Members: Free
Under 18: Free

Note: Pay-what-you-wish tickets are available at the admissions desk on Fridays, 7–9:30 pm. They may not be purchased in advance.

This Week's Hours

Mon: 10:30am–6pm
Tue: Closed
Wed: 10:30am–6 pm
Thu: 10:30am–6pm
Fri: 10:30am–10 pm
Sat: 11am–6pm
Sun: 11am–6pm

Member Viewings
Sat and Sun: 10:30–11 am

Nearby Subway

  • to 14th Street
  • to 8th Avenue

Upcoming Events

Jaune Quick-to-See Smith: Memory Map

This exhibition is the first New York retrospective of Jaune Quick-to-See Smith (b. 1940, citizen of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Nation), an overdue but timely look at the work of a groundbreaking artist. Jaune Quick-to-See Smith: Memory Map brings together nearly five decades of Smith’s dr... [ + ]awings, prints, paintings, and sculptures in the largest and most comprehensive showing of her career to date.

Smith’s work engages with contemporary modes of making, from her idiosyncratic adoption of abstraction to her reflections on American Pop art and neo-expressionism. These artistic traditions are incorporated and reimagined with concepts rooted in Smith’s own cultural practice, reflecting her belief that her “life’s work involves examining contemporary life in America and interpreting it through Native ideology.” Employing satire and humor, Smith’s art tells stories that flip commonly held conceptions of historical narratives and illuminate absurdities in the formation of dominant culture. Smith’s approach importantly blurs categories and questions why certain visual languages attain recognition, historical privilege, and value.

Across decades and mediums, Smith has deployed and reappropriated ideas of mapping, history, and environmentalism while incorporating personal and collective memories. The retrospective will offer new frameworks in which to consider contemporary Native American art and show how Smith has led and initiated some of the most pressing dialogues around land, racism, and cultural preservation—issues at the forefront of contemporary life and art today.

06/07/2023 10:30 AM
Wed, June 07
10:30AM
$
Adults: $25
Seniors/Students: $18
Members: Free
Under 18: Free

Note: Pay-what-you-wish tickets are available at the admissions desk on Fridays, 7–9:30 pm. They may not be purchased in advance.
Get Tickets

Jaune Quick-to-See Smith: Memory Map

This exhibition is the first New York retrospective of Jaune Quick-to-See Smith (b. 1940, citizen of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Nation), an overdue but timely look at the work of a groundbreaking artist. Jaune Quick-to-See Smith: Memory Map brings together nearly five decades of Smith’s dr... [ + ]awings, prints, paintings, and sculptures in the largest and most comprehensive showing of her career to date.

Smith’s work engages with contemporary modes of making, from her idiosyncratic adoption of abstraction to her reflections on American Pop art and neo-expressionism. These artistic traditions are incorporated and reimagined with concepts rooted in Smith’s own cultural practice, reflecting her belief that her “life’s work involves examining contemporary life in America and interpreting it through Native ideology.” Employing satire and humor, Smith’s art tells stories that flip commonly held conceptions of historical narratives and illuminate absurdities in the formation of dominant culture. Smith’s approach importantly blurs categories and questions why certain visual languages attain recognition, historical privilege, and value.

Across decades and mediums, Smith has deployed and reappropriated ideas of mapping, history, and environmentalism while incorporating personal and collective memories. The retrospective will offer new frameworks in which to consider contemporary Native American art and show how Smith has led and initiated some of the most pressing dialogues around land, racism, and cultural preservation—issues at the forefront of contemporary life and art today.

06/08/2023 10:30 AM
Thu, June 08
10:30AM
$
Adults: $25
Seniors/Students: $18
Members: Free
Under 18: Free

Note: Pay-what-you-wish tickets are available at the admissions desk on Fridays, 7–9:30 pm. They may not be purchased in advance.
Get Tickets

Jaune Quick-to-See Smith: Memory Map

This exhibition is the first New York retrospective of Jaune Quick-to-See Smith (b. 1940, citizen of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Nation), an overdue but timely look at the work of a groundbreaking artist. Jaune Quick-to-See Smith: Memory Map brings together nearly five decades of Smith’s dr... [ + ]awings, prints, paintings, and sculptures in the largest and most comprehensive showing of her career to date.

Smith’s work engages with contemporary modes of making, from her idiosyncratic adoption of abstraction to her reflections on American Pop art and neo-expressionism. These artistic traditions are incorporated and reimagined with concepts rooted in Smith’s own cultural practice, reflecting her belief that her “life’s work involves examining contemporary life in America and interpreting it through Native ideology.” Employing satire and humor, Smith’s art tells stories that flip commonly held conceptions of historical narratives and illuminate absurdities in the formation of dominant culture. Smith’s approach importantly blurs categories and questions why certain visual languages attain recognition, historical privilege, and value.

Across decades and mediums, Smith has deployed and reappropriated ideas of mapping, history, and environmentalism while incorporating personal and collective memories. The retrospective will offer new frameworks in which to consider contemporary Native American art and show how Smith has led and initiated some of the most pressing dialogues around land, racism, and cultural preservation—issues at the forefront of contemporary life and art today.

06/09/2023 10:30 AM
Fri, June 09
10:30AM
$
Adults: $25
Seniors/Students: $18
Members: Free
Under 18: Free

Note: Pay-what-you-wish tickets are available at the admissions desk on Fridays, 7–9:30 pm. They may not be purchased in advance.
Get Tickets

Jaune Quick-to-See Smith: Memory Map

This exhibition is the first New York retrospective of Jaune Quick-to-See Smith (b. 1940, citizen of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Nation), an overdue but timely look at the work of a groundbreaking artist. Jaune Quick-to-See Smith: Memory Map brings together nearly five decades of Smith’s dr... [ + ]awings, prints, paintings, and sculptures in the largest and most comprehensive showing of her career to date.

Smith’s work engages with contemporary modes of making, from her idiosyncratic adoption of abstraction to her reflections on American Pop art and neo-expressionism. These artistic traditions are incorporated and reimagined with concepts rooted in Smith’s own cultural practice, reflecting her belief that her “life’s work involves examining contemporary life in America and interpreting it through Native ideology.” Employing satire and humor, Smith’s art tells stories that flip commonly held conceptions of historical narratives and illuminate absurdities in the formation of dominant culture. Smith’s approach importantly blurs categories and questions why certain visual languages attain recognition, historical privilege, and value.

Across decades and mediums, Smith has deployed and reappropriated ideas of mapping, history, and environmentalism while incorporating personal and collective memories. The retrospective will offer new frameworks in which to consider contemporary Native American art and show how Smith has led and initiated some of the most pressing dialogues around land, racism, and cultural preservation—issues at the forefront of contemporary life and art today.

06/10/2023 10:30 AM
Sat, June 10
10:30AM
$
Adults: $25
Seniors/Students: $18
Members: Free
Under 18: Free

Note: Pay-what-you-wish tickets are available at the admissions desk on Fridays, 7–9:30 pm. They may not be purchased in advance.
Get Tickets

Jaune Quick-to-See Smith: Memory Map

This exhibition is the first New York retrospective of Jaune Quick-to-See Smith (b. 1940, citizen of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Nation), an overdue but timely look at the work of a groundbreaking artist. Jaune Quick-to-See Smith: Memory Map brings together nearly five decades of Smith’s dr... [ + ]awings, prints, paintings, and sculptures in the largest and most comprehensive showing of her career to date.

Smith’s work engages with contemporary modes of making, from her idiosyncratic adoption of abstraction to her reflections on American Pop art and neo-expressionism. These artistic traditions are incorporated and reimagined with concepts rooted in Smith’s own cultural practice, reflecting her belief that her “life’s work involves examining contemporary life in America and interpreting it through Native ideology.” Employing satire and humor, Smith’s art tells stories that flip commonly held conceptions of historical narratives and illuminate absurdities in the formation of dominant culture. Smith’s approach importantly blurs categories and questions why certain visual languages attain recognition, historical privilege, and value.

Across decades and mediums, Smith has deployed and reappropriated ideas of mapping, history, and environmentalism while incorporating personal and collective memories. The retrospective will offer new frameworks in which to consider contemporary Native American art and show how Smith has led and initiated some of the most pressing dialogues around land, racism, and cultural preservation—issues at the forefront of contemporary life and art today.

06/11/2023 10:30 AM
Sun, June 11
10:30AM
$
Adults: $25
Seniors/Students: $18
Members: Free
Under 18: Free

Note: Pay-what-you-wish tickets are available at the admissions desk on Fridays, 7–9:30 pm. They may not be purchased in advance.
Get Tickets
View All Upcoming Events

@whitneymuseum

In honor of #Pride, join us for a special tour on Friday at 8 pm exploring gender, sexuality, and LGBTQ+ perspectives. 🏳️‍🌈 Teaching fellow Patryk Tomaszewski will focus on artworks in the Whitney's collection on view at the Museum. Event details:
https://t.co/5taRYyARL8
https://t.co/ci3iXm7Kc4 13 Hours Ago

Through video, sculpture, photography, and design, Josh Kline's work questions how emergent technologies are changing human life in the twenty-first century. Josh Kline: Project for a New American Century is on view through August 13.
https://t.co/MayoyT7ltF Yesterday at 5:16 PM

Jaune on Joan. Jaune Quick-to-See Smith muses on her admiration for fellow artist Joan Mitchell, whose painting Hemlock (1956), shown here, is a treasured work in the Whitney's collection. Smith's retrospective Memory Map is on view now through August 13.
https://t.co/rYwSCc354t Sun at 3:26 PM

"Actual space is intrinsically more powerful and specific than paint on a flat surface." American artist Donald Judd was born on this day in 1928. Read about this untitled 1968 work from the collection:
https://t.co/6p0esWexaw
https://t.co/0NWE0QZeOc Sat at 7:59 PM

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