Whitney Museum seeks exchange with Korean institutions
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Founded in 1931, Whitney Museum is the only museum in New York City founded by an artist. / Courtesy of Whitney Museum
New Whitney building's inaugural show to feature Paik Nam-june
Adam D. Weinberg, director of the Whitney Museum
By Kwon Mee-yoo
The Whitney Museum of American Art in New York is the pioneer in developing and supporting American contemporary art since the early 20th century. Now the museum seeks to cooperate with overseas organizations and artists to promote American art in the world growing smaller.
Adam D. Weinberg, the Alice Pratt Brown Director of the Whitney Museum, headed to the 2014 Gwangju Biennale, themed "Burning Down the House" and curated by Jessica Morgan, to discover new talents as soon as he arrived in Korea.
"I was glad to see so many young talents as the Gwangju Biennale and the Whitney share a similar role of encouraging work of the next generation artists," the 60-year-old director of the art institution exclusively for American art said at an interview with The Korea Times, Monday.
Weinberg is on his one-week visit to Korea to attend the award ceremony of Yanghyun Prize, a contemporary art award he serves as a judge, and meet with Korean museum officials to pursue future collaboration.
Though Whitney is mainly dedicated to American art, it is open for cultural exchanges between different cultures. The Whitney Museum provided a breakthrough in Korean contemporary art scene when the Whitney Biennial was held in Korean in 1993. "It established a nice connection between Korea and us and we are looking for opportunities to introducing early 20th century American art to Korea in near future," Weinberg said.
Founded in 1931, Whitney Museum is the only museum in New York City founded by an artist. Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney, the museum's namesake and founder, was herself an artist and avid collector. "In that time, there was nothing like American art and Americans collected European art. However, she (Whitney) believed that there is great art in the U.S. and established Whitney Studio Club in 1918 to support artists," Weinberg said. "She threw parties for artists where American artists like Edward Hopper and Alexander Calder met other American artists."
Whitney originally wanted to donate her collection to the Metropolitan Museum of Art (MET), but the MET declined her collection because they were not interested in "American contemporary art" of the time. So Whitney founded a museum named after her in Greenwich Village, lower Manhattan, dedicated solely to American art.
The museum moved uptown to 54th street in 1954 and to current Breuer building in Manhattan's Upper East Side in 1966. "The Breuer building is iconic, but it is small. When we first moved to the Breuer, we had a collection of 2,000 but now it reaches up to 21,000 and many of the works including video and installation are much larger than early collections," Weinberg said.
So the Whitney embarked on a plan to build a new building to represent to past, present and future of American art. They hired Italian architect Renzo Piano to build a new museum next to the Hudson River in lower Manhattan that spans about 20,500 square meters with large galleries without columns, theaters and outdoor exhibition spaces. The long-awaited opening of its new is slated for next May.
"We are creating an inspirational place for artists as the Whitney is all about art of now. We invited many artists to see the construction and they already have ideas for new work in their heads," Weinberg said.
The new museum has exhibition spaces that look in to New York City in one side and to the Hudson River on the other side. "The Whitney is a bridge between High Line and Hudson River Park," Weinberg explained. "We also have hefty amount of outdoor spaces that is suitable for performances or projections as well as galleries."
The inaugural exhibit is pulled from Whitney's vast collection spanning from the beginning of the 20th century to the present. "Some of the artists are well-known, but some of them are unknown to even Americans. This is going to be a great discovery," he said. "It will cover everything from painting and sculpture to video and performance, including great works from Paik Nam-june."
After the grand opening, the museum will host exhibits of Archibald Motley, Frank Stella and Laura Poitras, widening the perspective on American art.
Weinberg was proud of the details of the contemporary art heaven, including the pop-art elevators designed by Richard Artschwager, which make the visitors walk into a basket or under a table.
The museum also plans to invite four artists to explore the museum's main gallery two weeks to create something as a part of project titled "As is" for spring 2016.
"Part of what we do is giving artist opportunities to try, experiment and take risks. A lot of museum's don't take risks, but if you really want to work with artists, sometimes you don't know what's going to happen -- it might not be good or result in a small failure. But the only way to know is take a chance," Weinberg said.
Though the Whitney Museum is exclusively for American art, Weinberg thinks the key lies in contemporariness.
"The Whitney Museum was founded almost 100 years ago and if you are found the Whitney Museum today, you probably wouldn't do it by nationality, but that's our history. Now there are many artists living in the U.S. and many American artists living in the world -- it's easy to be international and connected to American art at the same time. Everyone is from everywhere and that is a great thing about the U.S.," Weinberg said.
"The new Whitney is an opportunity to connect more with the world. We are an American museum with internationality, not in the way we did in the 1950s when it was a part of political project. It's now about exchange and connecting to other culture, learning and appreciating each other."