Description
The Whitney Museum of American Art is a modern and contemporary art museum devoted to American artists. Since 2015 it has stood at the foot of the High Line, in the Meatpacking District, at Gansevoort and Washington Streets, in a building by Renzo Piano with big windows facing the Hudson River.
The collection counts more than 25,000 works by over 3,500 artists, from the late 19th century to today. It holds more Edward Hopper than any other institution in the world, together with his archives, and you also find names such as Alexander Calder, Jasper Johns, Willem de Kooning, Lee Krasner, Roy Lichtenstein and Louise Bourgeois.
The building is made for walking around. Outdoor terraces, four in all, three of them linked by an outdoor staircase, look over the city and the river, and the eighth-floor café has a view too. The museum also stands at the southern entrance to the High Line, the elevated park.
Every two years the Whitney Biennial takes the pulse of new American art, and often sparks debate.
The Whitney exists because the Met said no thanks. In 1929 Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney offered the Metropolitan Museum more than 500 works of American art and was turned down. So the sculptor and heiress founded her own museum in New York, devoted to American art alone.
It opened in 1931 in three row houses on West 8th Street, in Greenwich Village. Its first director, Juliana Force, greeted visitors with a warning: "There may be pictures here that you do not like, but they are here to stay, so you may as well get used to them."
The museum later moved uptown, to Marcel Breuer's granite building on Madison Avenue, with its trapezoidal windows, and stayed there until 2014. The move downtown, with a cost of $422 million, opened on May 1, 2015.
The collection counts more than 25,000 works by over 3,500 artists, from the late 19th century to today. It holds more Edward Hopper than any other institution in the world, together with his archives, and you also find names such as Alexander Calder, Jasper Johns, Willem de Kooning, Lee Krasner, Roy Lichtenstein and Louise Bourgeois.
The building is made for walking around. Outdoor terraces, four in all, three of them linked by an outdoor staircase, look over the city and the river, and the eighth-floor café has a view too. The museum also stands at the southern entrance to the High Line, the elevated park.
Every two years the Whitney Biennial takes the pulse of new American art, and often sparks debate.
The Whitney exists because the Met said no thanks. In 1929 Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney offered the Metropolitan Museum more than 500 works of American art and was turned down. So the sculptor and heiress founded her own museum in New York, devoted to American art alone.
It opened in 1931 in three row houses on West 8th Street, in Greenwich Village. Its first director, Juliana Force, greeted visitors with a warning: "There may be pictures here that you do not like, but they are here to stay, so you may as well get used to them."
The museum later moved uptown, to Marcel Breuer's granite building on Madison Avenue, with its trapezoidal windows, and stayed there until 2014. The move downtown, with a cost of $422 million, opened on May 1, 2015.