Whitney 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. This presentation of the permanent collection highlights four broad themes that elucidate key developments of twentieth century art in this country. They include the fragmentation and abstraction of early modernism; the realism that focused on people and society; the aesthetics of industry, city and machine; and, finally, the convergence between mental state and bodily gesture that led to new types of form and abstraction. 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.

2008 Biennial
Today there are more artists working in more genres, using more varieties of material, and moving among more geographic locations than ever before. The 2008 Biennial seeks to reveal the links among these seemingly disparate and sometimes ephemeral practices. By exploring the networks that exist among contemporary artists and the work they create, the Biennial characterizes the state of American art today.This Biennial’s group of artists defies easy categorization, with many of them creating work in several mediums. In response to their diversity, and the evident trend toward event-based work, the 2008 Biennial will include corollary events and installations at the Park Avenue Armory, organized with the Art Production Fund. Almost completely comprised of new works, many of which are site-specific, the exhibition will fill nearly every floor of the Museum, including the sculpture court, and will invite visitors to explore the works in any order they choose. The film and video program will repeat each day, making it possible to view the entire schedule in one visit. Works presented at the Armory will range in type and duration, from music performances and a dance marathon to a 24-hour film screening and a bar-cum-sculpture that becomes a site for other artists' projects. More than a third of the eighty-one artists participating in the Biennial will present works both at the Whitney's historic Marcel Breuer building and at the Armory, allowing artists to show in the Museum even while they seek ways to complicate and transcend its parameters.

Robert Mapplethorpe
This special exhibition traces Robert Mapplethorpe's use of instant photography from 1970 to 1975. Created in collaboration with the Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation, the show brings together one hundred objects, many never exhibited before. Included are self-portraits, figure studies, still lifes, and portraits of lovers and friends including Patti Smith, Sam Wagstaff, and Marianne Faithfull. Many of these small, intimate photographs convey tenderness and vulnerability. Others depict a toughness and immediacy that would give way in later years to more classical form. Unlike the highly crafted images Mapplethorpe staged in the studio and became famous for, these disarming pictures are marked by spontaneity and invention. Together, they offer insight into the artist's creative development and reveal his pure delight in seeing at a formative time in his career. The show will be accompanied by a book that places this early work in the context of his life-long artistic production.

The Whitney Museum houses one of the world's foremost collections of twentieth-century American art. The Permanent Collection of some 12,000 works encompasses paintings, sculptures, multimedia installations, drawings, prints, and photographs- and is still growing. The Museum was founded in 1931 with a core group of 700 art objects, many of them from the personal collection of founder Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney; others were purchased by Mrs. Whitney at the time of the opening to provide a more thorough overview of American art in the early decades of the century. Mrs. Whitney favored the art of the revolutionary artists derisively called the Ashcan School, among them John Sloan, George Luks, and Everett Shinn, as well as realists such as Edward Hopper and American Scene painters John Steuart Curry and Thomas Hart Benton. Her initial gift, however, also comprised many important works by early modernists- Stuart Davis, Charles Demuth, Charles Sheeler, Max Weber, and others. Virtually all the works collected by the Museum for the next twenty years came through the generosity of Mrs. Whitney.