The Whitney

Greenwich Village

New York City

Art & Culture | History

Contemporary American art with a focus on works by living artists

About The Whitney

& why it made the Carpe City list

At the beginning of the twentieth century, sculptor Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney noticed that American artists with new ideas had trouble exhibiting or selling their work.
In 1914, Mrs. Whitney established the “Whitney Studio” in Greenwich Village, where she presented exhibitions by living American artists whose work had been disregarded by traditional academies. By 1929, she had assembled a collection of more than 500 pieces.
Whitney offered her collection to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, but it was declined. So, she set up her own institution with a specific mandate: to focus exclusively on the art and artists of the United States.
“The Whitney Museum of American Art” was founded in 1930 and opened in 1931 at its original location. After moves in 1954 and 1963, The Whitney’s current building opened on May 1, 2015, with vastly increased exhibition and programming space.
Innovation has been a hallmark of The Whitney since its beginnings. They were the first New York museum to present a major exhibition of a Video artist. And they consistently purchase works within the year they were created. This is often well before the artists who created them become broadly recognized.
They have also taken exhibitions beyond their walls. They opened free-of-charge, corporate-sponsored branch museums in surrounding areas. These operated with their own staff, serving as training grounds for curators. They also allowed the public more access to the collection and met the needs of some experimental artists. The last of the branches closed in 2008.
Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney was regarded as the leading patron of American art from 1907 until she died in 1942.