The Whitney Biennial bursts with ideas and provocations both gentle and pointed. To help you take it all in, we’ve put together an extensive collection of images from the show:
The 80th Whitney Biennial, which opened for previews this week is simultaneously a wildly ambitious and a quietly reserved exhibition.
With 63 artists and collectives, the show is an attempt to depict America as it can, may, or should exist in a moment of deep political, environmental, and social uncertainty. Titled “Quiet as It’s Kept,” the biennial is anchored by every flash of hope and dread you can imagine: the pandemic, demands for racial and economic justice, the 2020 election—you fill in the blanks.
Amid all that, the show’s curators, David Breslin and Adrienne Edwards, opted not to make any grand statements, but instead to offer a series of suggestions and hypotheses. Probably that was the right call. The show, quite simply, bursts with ideas and provocations both gentle and pointed. So to help you take it all in , we’ve put together an extensive collection of images from the show.. Photo by Ben Davis.Installation dedicated to Cassandra Press. Photo by Ben Davis.