From Hopper to the present (Whitney Museum of American Art)

Member Name: MykReeve

Product:	Whitney Museum of American Art
Date:	07/01/01 (134 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Great survey of American modern and contemporary art

Disadvantages: High admission fee, overworked cloakroom, not enough audio guides available

The Whitney Museum of American Art was the one museum in New York City that I regretted not visiting when I visited the city in 1999. In retrospect, I'm glad that I didn't visit then, as the layout of the museum has changed considerably since then.

Prior to December 2000, the museum's basic layout consisted almost entirely of temporary exhibitions, with exhibits from the museum's permanent collection relegated to the sidelines. In fact, the majority of guidebooks still say that the museum doesn't have a display of its permanent collection. However, since December 2000, a minimum of two floors of the museum has been given over to the permanent collection, leaving the other three floors for one or more temporary exhibitions.

The works in the museum consist exclusively of modern American art from the 20th century, and it really shows how relatively little innovation there has been in American contemporary art, and how much American modern and contemporary art has been based on development of art styles in European art. There are examples of American cubism, impressionism and surrealism on display, several decades more recent than the first examples of these styles in European modern art. Nonetheless, there are some stunning and original artists on display, including Mark Rothko, Jasper Johns, and Roy Lichtenstein to name just three.

When I visited the museum, a couple of weeks ago, I visited the first new-style layout of the museum's galleries. The fifth and second floors were devoted to the museum's permanent collection, while the fourth, third and first floor exhibition spaces were given over to temporary exhibitions.

Upon arrival, you join the queue to pay, before joining the even longer queue to check your bags and coat. Admission to the museum isn't cheap, weighing in at a hefty $10 (about £7) for adults and $8 for students, but children under 12 go free. For this, you get a little sticker, which
you have to wear when you tour the museum. Fortunately, you don't have to pay anything to check in your bags and coat, which I strongly advise doing, because you won't be allowed admission to some parts of the gallery if you don't. The queues that build up for the cloakroom are incredible, and queuing to either retrieve or deposit your stuff takes about 10-15 minutes, because there are only ever two people working there.

When you go through into the museum proper, you can choose to pick up the free audio guide, which includes commentary on the various artworks by art critics, university lecturers and the gallery's directors. This is pretty informative, and includes information on most of the museum's artwork on display, including the major temporary exhibition works. Unfortunately, they don't always have enough guides to fulfil the demand, and you might have to wait a few minutes to collect one from someone leaving the museum.

My tip for travelling around the museum is to take the lift from the lobby up to the fifth floor, and then walk down the spiral staircase from floor to floor. The fifth floor contains the first of the permanent collection displays, entitled "Hopper to mid-century". The highlight of this floor, for me, was the room of paintings by Edward Hopper, one of the best known American modern artists, who painted very evocative realist images of American life. The best of his pieces on display here is 'Early Sunday Morning', a beautiful painting showing a series of shopfronts in Manhattan. Other artists represented on this floor include George Bellows, and his painting of a prize-fight between 'Dempsey and Firpo' in the mid 1920s, and a couple of Georgia O'Keeffe's beautiful abstractions, 'The White Calico Flower' and 'Music Pink and Blue-II'.

At the back of the fifth floor gallery is a small staircase leading down to a mezzanine floor, which has two gall
eries. One houses a small collection of works by Alexander Calder, who produced some beautifully exuberant brightly-coloured mobiles, several works of twisted metal resembling animals and faces when viewed from certain angles, and an impressive piece entitled 'Calder's Circus' consisting of hundreds of tiny figures. The other gallery on the mezzanine floor houses a temporary exhibition. When I was there, it contained an exhibition by Roni Horn entitled 'Still Water (The River Thames, for example)', which consisted a series of photographs of the water of the Thames, peppered with annotations. Horn's annotations read like a stream of consciousness, an intentional connection I'm sure, as she provides her thoughts on different textures in the picture, and the history of the river.

The fourth floor of the gallery houses the first major temporary exhibition, devoted to a retrospective of contemporary American artist Sol Lewitt. Much of Lewitt's early work is concerned almost exclusively with cubes. You might not think that cubes alone provide much scope for diversity in the artist's work, but the first twenty years of Lewitt's career show little evidence of his examination of any other structure or form. Its almost as if he hasn't allowed himself to expand his artistic horizons until he has exhausted all the possibilities permitted by using this structure exclusively. His works are very impressive, and very thought provoking, almost musical in their nature, as he examines every single possibility for combining elements. For example, in his 1974 work 'Incomplete Open Boxes', he envisions a series of 122 "almost cubes", consisting of all the possible structures constructable with only three to eleven of the normal twelve sides of a cube. His later works, which are also on display, are no longer confined to work with cubes, concentrating on what he calls "complex forms" (or what we might call &q
uot;anything that's not a cube"). A lot of these structures are peculiar geometric forms, painted in such a way as to increase their complexity, and suggest a far more complex structure than is actually present. There are still hints of Lewitt's cubic obsession underlying his later works, but as his work has continued it has gained complexity, without losing its curiously beautiful lyrical qualities. Lewitt is very much a conceptual artist, which neatly excuses him from having to actually execute his artistic ideas ? he conceives of artistic ideas and then oversees their construction and completion. Several of his wall drawings can be seen in art galleries around the world, one is on permanent display in the Tate Modern in London, for example.

Lewitt's retrospective is the first major temporary exhibition since the rearrangement of the Whitney Museum of Modern Art, and if this is anything to judge from, I anticipate that temporary exhibitions at the Museum will be of outstanding quality in the future. Certainly, impressive lengths have been gone to to collect this collection of the artist's work from galleries throughout the world. This exhibition finishes on the 25 February 2001.

The third floor of the Whitney Museum contains another temporary exhibition, this one consisting of the work of Edward Steichen. He was a photographer who contributed many cover photographs to magazines including Vogue and Vanity Fair at the beginning of the 20th century, and who was frequently called upon to photograph celebrated figures of the time including Charlie Chaplin, Winston Churchill, and Greta Garbo. Works on display here include his photographs, prints and textural designs. This exhibition finishes on the 4 February 2001, to be replaced by a retrospective of the work of American contemporary photographer Kenneth Josephson.

The second floor of the Museum consists of another permanent collection of the museum's work, and is pro
bably the highlight of the museum's collection for me. Entitled 'Pollock to today', the galleries on this floor consist of the museum's collection of works by recent and contemporary American artists. Some of the most impressive works on display include Jasper Johns' patriotic 'Three Flags' and intriguing 'White Target', some of Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein's pop art, Chuck Close's 1969 portrait of composer Philip Glass. There is a room including works by Pollock, de Kooning and (ugh) Barnett Newman. Certainly, there's an impressive collection of American contemporary art here, displaying an excellent survey of new trends.

The first floor (or ground floor, as we know it) contains a small temporary exhibition space, currently hosting some of Sol Lewitt's pieces. The basement houses a small shop and a cafeteria.

The Whitney museum building itself is also quite impressive, the collection having moved into the building designed by Marcel Breuer in 1966. It's an odd inverted pyramid shape, with higher floors boasting more floor space. The windows are also intriguing, built at an odd angle to the walls, projecting out from the building, and creating an odd perspective-bending feel to the galleries. The galleries themselves are very spacious and well lit, with a comfortable amount of space between the exhibits.

Visiting the gallery is not as problem free as it should be - the cloakroom is overworked, the entrance fee is quite high, and there aren't enough audio guides to go round on crowded days, but the collection of art on display more than makes up for this. I definitely enjoyed my visit to the gallery, and was very impressed by the art on display, which provides a good history of 20th century American art. The decision to display more of the gallery's permanent collection was definitely a good one, and one that I very much approve of. There are too many good works in the gall
ery's permanent collection to let the majority of them rest unseen. Touring the collection takes about three hours.

Summary: