Whitney Museum of American Art
Address: 945 Madison Avenue at 75th Street,
NYC
Phone: (212)570-3676
WHITNEY MUSEUM PRESENTS 2000 BIENNIAL EXHIBITION
Organized by a national team of six curators One of the largest Biennials to date, with 97 participants For the first time in 25 years, a new medium is introduced.. Internet art
The Whitney Museum of American Art will present the work of 97 artists in its 2000 Biennial Exhibition, which opens at the Whitney Museum on March 23, 2000 and runs in its entirety through June 4, 2000. A team of six curators from around the country has designed the exhibition to be national and international in its reach. The cinematic selections will be presented in several venues in cities across the country, and art on the Internet will be accessible worldwide. The team was organized by and has worked under the direction of Maxwell L. Anderson, director of the Whitney Museum.
The 2000 Biennial Exhibition marks several firsts in the history of the exhibition. For the first time, the entire curatorial team was selected from outside of the Whitney Museum. One of the largest Biennials ever done, it is also the most international to date. with 21 artists born in other countries. "The inclusion of so many artists who were born outside of the U.S. but who have come to this country to work, attests to the strong pull the nation has for artists from all over the world. lt's inevitable that the 2000 Biennial Exhibition should reflect this growing internationalization" Anderson commented.
The Biennial will also include Internet art for the first time, and will be the first major American survey of contemporary art to showcase the latest developments in this medium. The work of the 27 artists in the cinematic program will be screened not only at the Whitney in New York but simultaneously at venues across the country. The Biennial also features a free audio guide, ''BienniaI Voices," produced in collaboration with the
exhibition artists. The audio program offers visitors the opportunity to hear the artists describe their work in their own words, providing unprecedented access to the creative process and encouraging multiple readings of each work in the exhibition.
The six curators organized the exhibition through a series of meetings in Chicago, San Diego and New York, supplemented with teleconferencing discussions. Visual images were accessible to them on a password-protected Extranet established specially for the Biennial. While each curator was selected from a particular area of the United States, submissions and selections were not confined to their own region. "Their approach was to create the exhibition based on the selection of particular works of art," Anderson noted. "Their decisions were made not so much by committee as by an evolving consensus. The process proved to be provocative and often challenging, but we all agreed from the outset that the exhibition would only benefit from the spirited nature of the debates.
"The 2000 Biennial has taken a fresh approach to the Whitney's signature tradition of introducing the public to new work by established and emerging American artists," Anderson stated. "The team members shared a wealth of experience and expertise, and together represented a spectrum of approaches to contemporary American art. I believe that this Biennial exhibition benefits from a national perspective, and the artists and artworks selected reflect the dialogue within this vibrant curatorial team. I am delighted that we were able to gather together the talent and energy of this exemplary group."
The curators for the 2000 Biennial Exhibition are: Michael Auping, chief curator, Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Texas; Valerie CasseI, director, Visiting Artists Program, School of the Art Institute of Chicago; Hugh M. Davies, director, Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego, California; Jane Farver, director of the List Visual Arts Center, MIT, Cambridge, Massachusetts; Andrea Miller-Keller, independent curator, Hartford, Connecticut; and Lawrence R. Rinder, director of the CCAC hstitute at the California College of Arts and Crafts, San Francisco and Oakland, California.
The 2000 Biennial is the 70th in the series of Annuals and Biennials inaugurated by Museum founder Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney in 1932.
Range of work includes painting. installation, photography, film and video projections, cinematic screenings and Internet art
© Whitney Museum of American Art
Untitled
Robert Gober
1999
Plaster,beeswax,human hair,cotton,leather,aluminium,enamel paint
85 � 101 � 63 ｃｍ
Still from "The Dead Weight of a Quarrel Hangs"
Walid Ra'ad
1999
Video,color,sound : 18 minutes
Facility of Speech
Katherine Sherwood
1999
Mixed media on canvas
274 � 213 ｃｍ
Bombshell
E.V.DAY
1999
Marilyn Monroe dress reproduction
487 � 609 � 609 ｃｍ
Still form Electric Earth
Doug Aitken
1999
Eight laserdisc installation and architectual environment
dimentions variable
True Blonde at Home
Lisa Yuskavage
1999
Oil on linen
167 � 182 ｃｍ
digital still from "Superbad"
Ben Benjamin
1995-present
Website www.superbad.com
Untitled House
Salomon Hueta
1999
Oil on canvas
53 � 35 ｃｍ
The 97 artists in the exhibition represent a vast range of ages, backgrounds and sensibilities. Long-
established artists, like photographer John Coplans, conceptual artist Hans Haacke and sculptor Richard Tuttle, will show alongside artists who do not yet have gallery representation, including William De Lottie, Dara Friedman and Mandy Morrison and mid-career artists, such as Dennis Adams, Dawoud Bey, Louise Lawler, Robert Gober, Silvia Kolbowski and Annette Lemieux.
Painting, sculpture, installation, film, video, photography and Internet art all will be represented. The range of work includes nontraditional portraiture by Salomon Huerta, Kurt Kauper and Lisa Yuskavage, and a diverse range of abstraction using a variety of materials and supports by such artists as Ghada Amer, Linda Besemer, Ingrid Calame and Katherine Sherwood. Several photographers deliberately.