New York
Whitney Museum of American Art
Smaller and more diverse than in years past, this year’s Whitney Biennial featured the work of 63 artists spread across two floors, the stairwell, and lobby of the museum’s new Renzo Piano building. With few walls, high ceilings, and works hung together in separate spaces as if in mini gallery shows, the layout encouraged viewers to wander about almost as if they were at an art fair. The rather vague organizing concept – the relationship of individual self to the turbulent present – seemed designed to be as inclusive and fragmented as our current political soap opera. Much of the critical response centered on the return of painting – mostly figurative with a few nods to abstraction – and the controversy over Dana Schutz’s Open Casket, based on photographs of Emmett Till in his coffin. …see the entire review in the print version of sept’s Sculpture magazine.
