The New Whitney

Although I haven't posted a museum visit for quite some time, I'd be remiss by not writing something about the newest major museum building in New York City, the Whitney, since I had a chance to visit in December of last year. The new Whitney Museum building opened last spring in lower Manhattan after decades on Madison Avenue. In years past I had visited the former building at E. 75th and Madison, a brutalist edifice designed by the Hungarian-born architect Marcel Breuer (1902-1981). Although many like or even admire the building, it has never been a favorite of mine, nor has most of the museum's collection, nor for that matter it's general direction as a museum of "American art," however that may be defined. The collection has always seemed skewed toward modernism, especially newer trends in abstraction as well as installation and conceptual art. Although it's a topic for another blog, for me the direction of contemporary artistic output is unsatisfying.

Whitney Museum at 75th & Madison Avenue

Nevertheless, given that the new building has generated enormous publicity and because it's at the end of that delightful new park, the Highline, we decided to take a look. Renzo Piano is mostly a favorite architect, as well. It was a really lucky decision because we visited on an unseasonably warm and sunny afternoon.

To get to the Whitney, now in lower Manhattan on Gansevoort Street near the Hudson River, we took the A train south to 14th Street then walked west and ascended to the Highline Park and thence to the new building. This approach to the structure gave us a great view of the jumble of older buildings surrounding it plus other new ones that have begun to dot the old meatpacking district. There are still packers in the area, one of which sets cheek-by-jowl next to the museum itself. It's hard to appreciate the structure of the new Whitney without a few photos, so here are a couple.

The Whitney from Highline Park (see the meatpacker's truck, R?)

Looking south from Highline Park you can see the Whitney building with it's step-wise terraces arrayed on the east side. These terraces open from the interior galleries where enormous windows welcome the view of lower Manhattan into the museum. The terraces serve as sculpture courts and also provide visitors photo opportunities galore (mandatory in museums these days, it seems). On the west side, windows provide vistas of the Hudson River and New Jersey.

West side of the new Whitney building

The building is nine stories tall, glowing white and grey among its older red and buff brethren. From the west many have noted how it resembles the superstructure of a ship, which is fitting given that it overlooks the piers lining the Hudson. Besides it's new and open look, compared with the severely enclosed Breuer building, the new Whitney is larger and so allows more of the permanent collection to be displayed. One of the things I disliked about the old Whitney was the feeling of crowding that seemed inevitable.

The new structure designed by Renzo Piano, the famous Italian, has nine stories and 20,000 square feet, and sports one space on Floor Five that goes clean through, east to west, without columns, making it the single largest unobstructed space in the city. The entire Whitney building is spacious and airy, more like a European airport terminal than an art museum, especially on the ground floor. The galleries are all on higher floors. When you look at the building, only a block or so from the Hudson, and remember the flooding that Manhattan endured not so long ago, it's easy to see why it looks like it's on stilts. The most important contents are high above any future inundation.

No ponderous stairways to the promised land of art; no massive central assistance desk or massive neoclassical columns or arches to be found. All is modern, sleek, shiny or some shade of gray. There is a glass-walled restaurant on the east end and a gift shop--sporting a few pricey tchochke originals by Jeff Koons, among others--occupying the southwest corner of the lobby space but looking as if it could be broken down and moved at a moment's notice. Come to think of it, that's a bit of what the interior of the entire place is like, and I'm told it's intentional to provide as much flexibility as possible.

As for the current exhibition, we took the elevator to Floor Eight, where a retrospective of Archibald Motley was on display. Motley is known as part of the Harlem Renaissance, although he was actually a lifelong Chicagoan. Nonetheless, the exhibition of Motley's work, from his beginnings in classical oil painting through his years as a painter of the jazz age black experience was surprising, engaging, and thought-provoking. It was a pleasure to see the work and become acquainted with a very talented artist. Motley's work is well worth the time. He should be better known.

[Update: the painting below, "Gettin' Religion," and one of my favorites in this retrospective, has been acquired by the Whitney, according to the New York Times Jan 11, 2016 edition.]

Archibald Motley. "Gettin' Religion," 1948

At the time of our visit Floor Seven was devoted to the permanent collection. Clearly, this floor will probably be used to show a rotating sampler of the museum's collection. They did have several by Edward Hopper out, including "Early Sunday Morning" (a particular favorite of mine), "Seven A.M." which has always seemed singularly bleak to me, and "Railroad Sunset," dating from 1930 1948 and 1929 respectively. Also notable on this floor was the well-known "Dempsey and Firpo" by George Bellows, showing Jack Dempsey being knocked out of the boxing ring. Bellows was one of the Ashcan School of the early 20th century, and a particular favorite too. And to my surprise and delight there were also two works by Thomas Hart Benton, neither of which I'd seen before. The first was a scene from "Streetcar Named Desire," showing the principal setting and characters of the famous Tennessee Williams play/movie, including Marlon Brando and Karl Malden, among others. This one seems to predate the movie. The second Benton was "The Lord is My Shepherd," depicting an elderly couple at their kitchen table. Benton, in his own way, distorted figures and space rather like El Greco, at least so it has always seemed to me. In any event, both of these paintings were delightful to examine. Mixed in on Floor Seven was a whole lot of other, truly forgettable work punctuated here and there by memorable things. My favorite by Charles Demuth, an early 20th century painter, is his quasi-cubist imagining of a Pennsylvania grain elevator, "My Egypt," was on display. There was a lovely sculpted head by Elizabeth Catlett (1948), and an amusing painting by Paul Cadmus called "Floozies and Sailors," but for me much of the rest of the floor, and for that matter the museum itself is a blur and not very memorable. Alas.

Floor Six is devoted to the Thea Westrich Wagner and Ethan Wagner Collection. We saw it but I honestly don't remember much about individual pieces. The museum website has this to say: The current exhibition includes pieces ".....by, among many others, Diane Arbus, Robert Gober, Jeff Koons, Sherrie Levine, Richard Prince, and...will also include recent work by artists such as Liz Deschenes, Sam Lewitt..." More than 500 works comprise the gift that will enter the Whitney’s permanent collection. Perhaps there are others in the collection that are more memorable.

Floor Five is the huge unobstructed space mentioned above but in this iteration it's been configured to hold what the museum calls "the most comprehensive American retrospective to date" of Frank Stella's work. Stella began as a painter and often says that his three dimensional works are paintings, too. Much of his work leaves me utterly cold, particularly his early black paintings, but a few newer works speak volumes. "Eskimo Curlew,"

"Eskimo Curlew," 1976

a three-dimensional work that he calls a painting is one of the pieces that I enjoyed. It has French curve-like shapes contrasting over rectangular ones, each painted a different color. On the other hand, Stella's early works don't have much to say to me at all. And when someone has to explain to me why a piece is worthwhile or what it says, it has missed the mark in communicating, seems to me. His newer works are massive, sculptural, and often amazing to look at, but I've no clue what they're about, if anything, or what they are saying. Alas, they too don't speak much. We made short work of the retrospective and headed downstairs.
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This new incarnation of the Whitney Museum of American Art is more welcoming and more fun than the old building was. For one thing, Renzo Piano brings in considerably more light plus superlative glimpses of the surrounding city. In a very real way, this building is consonant with the current American culture. Most museums are enclosed, the world shut out in favor of the art on display, and the old Whitney always seemed like that to me. Here, the world and contemporary "American art" mingle, are part and parcel of the same world. The art isn't shut away from the world nor the world from the art. The new digs are also considerably more flexible and add to the museum experience if only because the increase in size makes it possible to put more on display. I like the airy new place much more than the old fortress.

By now we were famished but the museum restaurants on Floor Eight and on the ground floor were both full. We fled the museum and walked a few blocks north to the Chelsea Market, where we managed a sumptuous and rewarding lunch before hitting the subway back to our hotel. It was a successful and rewarding visit to a newly-interesting museum.

Here is a multimedia piece from the New York Times regarding the new Whitney:
The New Whitney