Whitney Museum of American Art New York City.com : Profile

Arts & Attractions Whitney Museum of American Art

The Whitney is reopening its doors on September 3, with new guidelines in place for the safety and well-being of our visitors and staff.

Click here for latest information form the NYC Dept of health.

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.

Drag the street view to look around 360°.
Use the arrow buttons to navigate down the street and around the neighborhood!

Upper East Side Description

Whitney Museum of American Art is located in the Upper East Side neighborhood of Manhattan. How best to describe one of the most famous neighborhoods in the United States? Aside from the extreme concentration of the rich and the famous, their opulent dwellings, and the army of doormen, butlers and chauffeurs who serve them, the Upper East Side is also a showcase for some of America’s finest cultural establishments.

Walk along Fifth Avenue’s Museum Mile which features a veritable plethora of artistic and cultural institutions. For some of the best contemporary art collections, visit the Cooper Hewitt Design Museum and the recently renovated cylindrical wonder that is the Guggenheim. Designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, the Guggenheim has always prided itself on being home to innovative and at times controversial works of art since its inception in 1959. There’s also the Jewish Museum, one of the world's largest and most important institutions devoted to exploring the remarkable scope and diversity of Jewish culture.

Of course, no visit to Museum Mile would be complete without to the city’s crown jewel, the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Many special exhibits complement the permanent displays at the Met, yet the collection is so vast that the huge storage areas under Central Park are bursting with pictures, sculptures and other objects d’art. From rare, ancient Egyptian relics to medieval coats of armor to a costume gallery that spans seven centuries it’s almost impossible to see everything in one visit, so multiple trips may be necessary. In addition, visit the nearby Whitney Museum of American Art and see thousands of works of art including collections by seminal artists such as Edward Hopper, Alexander Calder and Reginald Marsh. The Asia Society Museum, and Frick Collection are also nearby.

The official residence of New York City’s mayor, Gracie Mansion, is at the northern end of Carl Schurz Park on 89th Street. The main floor of the mansion is open to the public and is a showcase for art and antiques created by New York designers, cabinetmakers, painters and sculptors. Tours must be reserved in advance however.

From glamorous Fifth and Park Avenues to the fashionable townhouses in the East Sixties, Seventies and Eighties, there are too many noteworthy addresses to list, but a veritable Who’s Who of American society can be found here and if you’re lucky, you might even get a glimpse of it. For your best bet, try dinner at Elaine’s. While the food is essentially secondary to the patronage, it remains a great spot for celeb-spotting. Named after its famed, cantankerous owner who can still be spotted their nearly every night attending to customers, the casual bistro is a frequented by a high celebrity clientele and counts Woody Allen, Michael Caine and Jackie Onassis among its devotees. Good luck getting a reservation. If it's fresh seafood you're craving try Atlantic Grill. Sample the daily selection of oysters and clams on the half shell from the raw bar. Or try their unique take on sushi and sashimi. Restaurant Daniel is another great dining option renowned for its award-winning French cuisine and elegant atmosphere.

The Upper East Side is also home to some of the most luxurious hotels in New York. There's the classic Carlyle, which has been called home by leaders in world affairs, business, society, entertainment and the arts since its debut in 1930. The Carlyle remains a landmark of elegance and refined taste. Other prestigious hotels in the area include The Mark, which has been cited as one of the top 100 U.S. and Canada hotels in a Travel + Leisure's readers' poll and the sophisticated Lowell. A bit further south at the southeastern corner of Central Park, of course there's the most legendary hotel of them all, The Plaza, which set the standard for luxury when it opened over a century ago. The tradition continues following a recently completed $400 million, two-year renovation. The passion and uncompromising service, which made the hotel a legend, has returned with a new and contemporary spirit.

See what's happening on this day:

There are no events taking place on this date.

Upcoming Events

The Whitney's Collection

In 1931, before the Whitney Museum of American Art opened to the public, Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney made a gift that became the basis of the institution’s holdings of modern art. Her devotion to the work of living artists has defined how the Whitney has developed ever since.

Jacob Lawrence, Geor... [ + ]gia O'Keeffe, Willem de Kooning, and Ed Ruscha are just a few of the American innovators on view in this presentation of works from the Whitney's collection. This exhibition highlights four broad themes that underscore the key developments of twentieth-century art in America: "Form Building, Form Breaking," "City and Machine," "The Figure and Its Realities," and "Mind, Body, Gesture." While these developments are grounded in historical periods, their qualities and ideas also overlap and connect, extending into the work of living artists who found new ways to apply them to creative expression.

05/29/2022 11:00 AM

Sun, May 29

11:00AM