The Whitney

The Whitney is among New York's many storied art museums, but, as the museum of modern American art, we had to talk ourselves into going: we are confirmed Eurocentrics and particularly value works that have stood the test of time. But we went nonetheless and particularly enjoyed the Whitney and its collection, in part because of a great docent (Jan) and tour, and also because of the electricity of the Free Friday Night crowd. We'll be back. And we may approach contemporary art with a little greater understanding.

So our strategy with NYC's plethora of museums has been
to go for the reduced fare, the free Friday nights, the "pay
what you wish" days; with the encyclopedic Met, we were
sure we'd visit sufficiently often to justify a membership; 
with most of the others, $30 or more per person/per visit
seemed too much to risk on what might well have turned out
to be, um, not to our taste...

We wisely enrolled in the one hour tour of the Whitney's
classics, led by a museum pro, Jan, one of the best we've
had over the years; above is The Brooklyn Bridge: 
Variation on an Old Theme, by Joseph Stella, 1939

Elsie Driggs, Pittsburgh, 1927

George Bellows, Dempsey and Firpo, 1924; that's Dempsey being
knocked out of the ring...but he came back to win

Florine Stettheimer, New York/Liberty, 1918-1919; 
the Whitney's first acquisition

Georgia O'Keefe, The Mountain, New Mexico, 1931

Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney, founder and major supporter of
the museum; also an artist herself and a visionary, founding an
art museum where artists themselves would take the lead...the
portrait by Robert Henri, 1916 

Thomas Hart Benton, The Lord Is My Shepherd, 1926;
deaf couple

Charles Sheeler, The River Rouge Plant, 1932: FoMoCo...

Georgia O'Keefe, Summer Days, 1936 (a gift of Calvin
Klein, 1994)

Andrew Wyeth, Winter Fields, 1942

Edward Hopper, Early Sunday Morning, 1930

Edward Hopper, A Woman in the Sun, 1961 (the model was his
wife, Josephine Nivison Hooper, then aged 78...the docent noted)

Edward Hopper, Soir Bleu, 1914; as one might infer, Hopper studied
in Paris for a time...multiple art history allusions...)

Clark Gable look-aline detail...

Hopper, Self Portrait, 1925-1930

Paul Cadmus, Sailors and Floosies, 1938; banned by the Navy Department

Andy Warhol, Before and After, #4, 1962; his nose job; seriously

Ed Clark, Winter Bitch, 1959; now into the "I could have done that"
realm

After the tour, we took a break and ventured to the top floor overlook

But wait, there's more...one of the Whitney's things that make it 
artist-driven is its biennial show, a juried contest of contemporary
art...think of the Salon, or the Academy...wait, no, don't...anyway,
we ventured onto the floor that features some of these...

A wall of photographs of women's health caregivers...sorry, no documentation

Susan Jackson, Singin', in Sweetcake's Storm, 2017;
hanging painting we liked

Eddie Rodolfo Aparicio, White Dove, Let us Fly, 2024
strangely appealed...a whole dump-truck's worth of
modified amber, volcanic stone, etc.

Another Suzanne Jackson hanging painting
we liked; from Savannah...a SCAD grad?

One entire floor of the Whitney was a multi-media celebration of
the work of dancer and choreographer Alvin Ailey

Music, live performance...

Video of his many performances and projects

And other exhibits of the Afro-American experience...