Art History News: “Untitled” (America)

The Whitney Museum of American Art

Beginning July 5, 2025

The Whitney Museum of American Art presents a refreshed look at the Museum’s collection in the exhibition “Untitled” (America). Coinciding with the Whitney’s ten-year anniversary in its current building downtown, this reinstallation celebrates highlights of the collection alongside new acquisitions in an open, dynamic exhibition design that forges connections across subjects and decades.

Reflecting on the vision of its founder, sculptor, and philanthropist Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney, the presentation underscores the Museum’s longtime commitment to supporting contemporary American art, even as the notion of “America” has and continues to evolve. Today, the Whitney’s collection is a testament to the ambitious and experimental practices of artists in the United States, offering diverse stories of American life through formal, social, and political lenses. “Untitled” (America) features recognizable favorites by renowned American artists, including Jean-Michel Basquiat, Barkley L. Hendricks, Edward Hopper, Jasper Johns, Archibald John Motley Jr., Georgia O’Keeffe, Mark Rothko, Ed Ruscha, Alma Thomas, Kay WalkingStick, and Andy Warhol, alongside more recent acquisitions from the Museum’s collection. It highlights key ideas and artistic approaches in American art from 1900 through the early 1980s, at times cutting across chronological boundaries.

Beginning with the Whitney’s robust holdings in figurative and realist traditions, the presentation considers how artists have responded to place and memory in the American landscape, popular culture and the rise of consumerism, the seductions and illusions of mass media, and the spatial and cultural dynamics of abstraction. “

We’re thrilled to welcome visitors back to our collection galleries,” said Kim Conaty, Nancy and Steve Crown Family Chief Curator at the Whitney Museum. “The newly configured spaces offer something for everyone, with favorite works in new conversations, and recent additions to the collection making stunning debuts. Special installations, like a daylit sculpture gallery dedicated to the work of Isamu Noguchi, celebrate the great strengths of the collection set within the unique architecture of the Whitney’s downtown building.”

“Untitled” (America) will be on view at the Whitney Museum beginning July 5, 2025. The exhibition is curated by Kim Conaty, Nancy and Steve Crown Family Chief Curator at the Whitney, with Antonia Pocock, Curatorial Assistant. This presentation of the Whitney’s collection is dedicated to the memory of Leonard A. Lauder, Chairman Emeritus, who recently passed away, in honor of his extensive contributions to the Museum.

Exhibition Overview

“Untitled” (America) On the occasion of the Whitney’s tenth anniversary downtown, “Untitled” (America) celebrates the past, present, and future of the Museum’s collection. This presentation, which features works from 1900 through 1980, highlights beloved icons from the Whitney’s collection, including recent acquisitions that expand existing narratives and surface new ones. Organized thematically, the exhibition foregrounds key ideas and approaches in twentieth-century artmaking in the United States, and the open exhibition design allows for meaningful connections to be made across subjects and time periods. The exhibition title draws inspiration from Felix Gonzalez-Torres, whose 1994 work of the same name will be installed in the west window, just off the entrance to the exhibition. This work, consisting of twelve strands of light bulbs, one of which will be installed here, offers a participatory meditation on the concept of “America.”

As Gonzalez-Torres reflected, “The America that I now know is still a place of light, a place of opportunities, of risks, of justice, of racism, of injustice, of hunger and excess, of pleasure and growth. Democracy is a constant job, a collective dedication. My sculpture “Untitled” (America) comes with no instructions. It can be installed any way someone might want.”

In that spirit, this exhibition embraces the complexity and contradictions of “American” art, leaving its definition open to question and collaboration from visitors. “Untitled” (America) opens with five iconic works from the collection: Jasper Johns, Three Flags (1958), Georgia O'Keeffe, Summer Days (1936), Barkley L. Hendricks, Steve (1976), Alma Thomas, Mars Dust (1972), and Kay WalkingStick, April Contemplating May (1972).

The first gallery is dedicated to the Whitney’s rich history of collecting works by artists working in figural and realist traditions. It highlights several works from the Museum’s founding collection, including Robert Henri, Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney (1916), George Bellows, Dempsey and Firpo (1924), and Edward Hopper, Early Sunday Morning (1930). Reflecting on the Museum’s continued commitment to realism and portraiture, Arshile Gorky’s The Artist and His Mother (1936) will be paired with Alice Neel’s Andy Warhol (1970), both on view at the Museum for the first time in several years.

The American landscape will be examined through conceptions of place, memory, and war, with a selection of works from Jacob Lawrence’s War Series (1946-47), paired with a new acquisition by Fritz Scholder, Massacre at Wounded Knee II (1970). Works by Elsie Driggs, Eldzier Cortor, Joseph Stella, and a new acquisition by Aaron Douglas will examine the built landscape across different moments in US history. Subsequent galleries in the exhibition explore how artists have engaged with objects from everyday life, both as materials and sources of inspiration.

Works like Yayoi Kusama’s Air Mail Stickers (1969) explore an artist’s transformation of the mundane to the extraordinary, and Marisol’s print Diptych (1971) introduces an irreverent take on self-portraiture through the use of her own body as a matrix. Works by Gerald Murphy and Man Ray offer earlier examples of artists questioning consumerism and bringing popular culture into their work.

The seductions and illusions of mass media are explored in works like Nam June Paik’s Magnet TV (1965), which undermines the power of broadcast and mass media by distorting and manipulating the content being served to the viewers. Ed Ruscha’s Large Trademark with Eight Spotlights (1962), Jean-Michel Basquiat’s Hollywood Africans (1983), Andy Warhol’s Ethel Scull 36 Times (1963), and Rosalyn Drexler’s Marilyn Pursued by Death (1963) point to the artifice of Hollywood and celebrity culture while engaging in the visual languages of commercial culture. The final gallery of the exhibition explores abstraction through key Abstract Expressionist works, including Clyfford Still’s Untitled (1956), Norman Lewis' American Totem (1960), and Mark Rothko’s Four Darks in Red (1958). Alongside these paintings, Jay DeFeo’s The Rose (1958-66), Lee Bontecou’s Untitled (1963), and a recent acquisition, Zilia Sánchez’s Eros (1976/1998), push further at the spatial and material dynamics of abstraction.

Aaron Douglas, Mural Study for Cravath Hall, Fisk University, 1929. Gouache on board, 17 1/2 × 35 3/8 in. (44.5 × 89.9 cm). Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; purchase with funds from the DeMartini Family Endowment, the Ganzi Family Endowment, the Meg and Bennett Goodman Family Foundation, and the Poses Family Endowment 2023.17. © 2025 Estate of Aaron Douglas / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

IMAGES

Edward Hopper, Early Sunday Morning, 1930. Oil on canvas, 35 3/16 × 60 1/4 in. (89.4 × 153 cm). Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; purchase with funds from Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney 31.426. © 2025 Heirs of Josephine N. Hopper/Licensed by Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

George Bellows, Dempsey and Firpo, 1924. Oil on canvas, 51 1/8 × 63 1/4 in. (129.9 × 160.7 cm). Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; purchase with funds from Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney 31.95;

Archibald John Motley, Jr., Gettin' Religion, 1948. Oil on linen, 32 × 39 7/16 in. (81.3 × 100.2 cm). Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; purchase Josephine N. Hopper Bequest, by exchange 2016.15. © Valerie Gerrard Browne

Robert Henri, Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney, 1916. Oil on canvas, 49 15/16 × 72in. (126.8 × 182.9 cm). Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; gift of Flora Whitney Miller 86.70.3

Joseph Stella, The Brooklyn Bridge: Variation on an Old Theme, 1939. Oil on canvas, 70 1/4 × 42 3/16 in. (178.4 × 107.2 cm). Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Purchase 42.15;

Norman Lewis, American Totem, 1960. Oil on canvas, 73 11/16 × 43 1/8 in. (187.2 × 109.5 cm). Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; purchase with funds from the Laurie M. Tisch Illumination Fund in memory of Preston Robert and Joan Tisch, the Painting and Sculpture Committee, Director’s Discretionary Fund, Adolph Gottlieb, by exchange, and Sami and Hala Mnaymneh 2018.141. © Norman Lewis, courtesy of Michael Rosenfeld Gallery, LLC

Gerald Murphy, Cocktail, 1927. Oil and pencil on linen, 29 1/16 × 29 15/16 in. (73.8 × 76 cm). Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; purchase with funds from Evelyn and Leonard A. Lauder, Thomas H. Lee and the Modern Painting and Sculpture Committee 95.188. © 2025 Estate of Honoria Murphy Donnelly / Licensed by VAGA at Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

Jacob Lawrence, War Series: Beachhead, 1947. Tempera on composition board, 15 7/8 × 20 1/16 in. (40.3 × 51 cm). Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; gift of Mr. and Mrs. Roy R. Neuberger 51.13. © 2025 The Jacob and Gwendolyn Lawrence Foundation, Seattle / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

Jacob Lawrence, War Series: On Leave, 1947. Tempera on composition board, 16 3/16 × 20 1/4 in. (41.1 × 51.4 cm). Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; gift of Mr. and Mrs. Roy R. Neuberger 51.12a-b. © 2025 The Jacob and Gwendolyn Lawrence Foundation, Seattle / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York