Events
Auction
Nina Simone Childhood Home
Benefit Auction
May 12–22, 2023
This online auction is part of a multifaceted fundraiser to benefit the Nina Simone Childhood Home Preservation Project. Spearheaded by the African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund, the project aims to fully restore and maintain the birthplace of musical icon and civil rights activist Nina Simone. Cocurated by artist Adam Pendleton and the tennis champion, entrepreneur, and arts patron Venus Williams, the auction—hosted by Sotheby’s—features work by international artists, including Ellen Gallagher, Sarah Sze, Mary Weatherford, and Stanley Whitney.
Sarah Sze, Spell, 2023 © Sarah Sze
Auction
Artsy Spotlight Auction: Stanley Whitney
In Support of the Art for Justice Fund and Planned Parenthood of Greater New York
September 27–October 7, 2022
The Freedom We Fight For (2022), a new painting by Stanley Whitney, will be featured in a single-lot benefit auction hosted by Artsy, in partnership with Gagosian. All proceeds from the sale will support Art for Justice Fund and Planned Parenthood of Greater New York in their respective urgent fights for decarceration and criminal justice reform and reproductive rights in the United States. The artwork is viewable at Gagosian, Park & 75, New York, during the auction.
The eighty-inch-square oil-on-linen abstract painting underscores Whitney’s facility as a colorist. Pieced together from rectilinear fields of red, yellow, green, blue, orange, brown, black, and gray divided by horizontal bands of red, blue, and teal, its “stacked” composition, translucent layers of paint, and energetic brushwork effectively deconstruct the modernist grid. Whitney draws inspiration from Greek and Mediterranean ceramics and the juxtaposition of ancient and modern Roman architecture.
Stanley Whitney, The Freedom We Fight For, 2022 © Stanley Whitney
In Conversation
Stanley Whitney
Matthew Jeffrey Abrams
Thursday, October 15, 2020, 2pm EDT
In the context of Stanley Whitney’s exhibition of recent paintings at Gagosian, Rome, which closes on October 17, Whitney and author Matthew Jeffrey Abrams will discuss Abram’s new monograph on the artist and the diverse formative influences on the artist’s imagination. To join, register at zoom.us.
Stanley Whitney at his studio near Parma, Italy, 2012. Photo: Marina Adams, courtesy the artist
Support
Artists for Biden
October 2–8, 2020
Artists for Biden is an online-only sale of works by leading contemporary artists to support the Biden Victory Fund—a joint fundraising committee authorized by Biden for President, the Democratic National Committee, and forty-seven state Democratic parties. All proceeds from the sale will provide resources needed to elect Joe Biden and Kamala Harris and support other Democratic candidates across the country in the lead up to Election Day. Work by Cecily Brown, Michael Heizer, Jeff Koons, Roy Lichtenstein, Brice Marden, Ed Ruscha, Richard Serra, Cindy Sherman, Sarah Sze, Stanley Whitney, and Christopher Wool will be available. To register for early access on October 1, visit secure.joebiden.com.
Sarah Sze, Afterimage, Silver, 2018 © Sarah Sze
Collaboration
Gagosian Rome
& La Fondazione
June 3–September 2020
Rome
As a preview to Stanley Whitney’s upcoming exhibition at Gagosian Rome later this year, the gallery is presenting the Bertacca paintings, produced in his studio near Parma, Italy. Whitney’s experiences in Italy, where he lived during the 1990s and where he maintains a working studio, remain a constant source of enrichment for his art. As a complementary project, each week La Fondazione is presenting the work of a contemporary Italian artist born in the 1980s or 1990s, visible to passersby through the building’s glass doors, daily from 6pm to 11am.
Download the full press release in English (PDF) or Italian (PDF)
Stanley Whitney, Bertacca 2, 2019 © Stanley Whitney. Photo: Giorgio Benni
Announcements
New Representation
Stanley Whitney
Gagosian is pleased to announce the representation of Stanley Whitney. Renowned for the depth of his exploration into the expressive potentials of painted color and form, Whitney has been committed to abstraction since the mid-1970s. While living in Rome in the 1990s, he consolidated a process-based painterly approach which he has now sustained and developed over the course of three decades.
Photo: Jeannette Montgomery Barron/Trunk Archive
Commission
Stanley Whitney
Ruth R. Marder Center for Matisse Studies
The Baltimore Museum of Art has commissioned Stanley Whitney to create a set of three large-scale stained-glass windows, titled Dance with Me Henri, for the new Ruth R. Marder Center for Matisse Studies, an approximately 2,500-square-foot space on the first floor of the museum dedicated to the study of Henri Matisse, opening December 2021. Whitney has long been recognized for his vibrant explorations of color and light within the painterly structures of the grid and has often cited historic European painting—including the work of Matisse and, in particular, Matisse’s glass windows for the Chapelle du Rosaire de Vence in southern France—as a source of inspiration for his formal investigations. To create the panels, Whitney is working with Franz Mayer of Munich, one of the world’s oldest and most celebrated artist glass studios.
Stanley Whitney’s installation Dance with Me Henri (2021) at the Baltimore Museum of Art. Artwork © Stanley Whitney
Commission
Stanley Whitney
No to Prison Life
For his first public commission, Stanley Whitney uses the H&R Block Artspace Project Wall at his alma mater, Kansas City Art Institute in Missouri, to display No to Prison Life (2019) from March 29, 2019 through January 31, 2020. Whitney’s Project Wall commission intentionally combines painting and handwritten text to register an urgent public protest against a US judicial system that promotes arrest, incarceration, and other forms of imprisonment that often further damage lives.
Stanley Whitney, No to Prison Life, 2019 © Stanley Whitney
Honor
Stanley Whitney
American Academy of Arts and Letters
Stanley Whitney was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters in May 2017. Founded in 1898, the organization honors the country’s leading visual artists, architects, composers, and writers, and seeks to foster interest in literature, music, and art by administering awards, exhibiting work, funding performances, and purchasing artwork for donation to museums. Election into the American Academy of Arts and Letters is considered the highest form of recognition of artistic merit in the United States, and its members are elected for life.
Photo: Miranda Leighfield
Museum Exhibitions
On View
X
A Decade of Collecting, 2012–2022
Through December 21, 2023
Sheldon Museum of Art, University of Nebraska–Lincoln
sheldonartmuseum.org
X: A Decade of Collecting, 2012–2022 is a survey of artworks acquired for the Sheldon Museum of Art’s collection over the past decade. The chosen works demonstrate the breadth of collecting efforts and are a modest representation of the approximately 1,875 pieces that have entered the museum’s holdings since 2012. The exhibition seeks to present a snapshot of how the collection continues to evolve. Work by Richard Avedon, Nathaniel Mary Quinn, Andy Warhol, and Stanley Whitney is included.
Nathaniel Mary Quinn, Big Bertha, 2015 © Nathaniel Mary Quinn
Opening Soon
Stanley Whitney
Opening Spring 2024
Buffalo AKG Art Museum, New York
buffaloakg.org
Conveying the breadth of Stanley Whitney’s practice from the early 1970s through today, this exhibition of artist’s paintings at the Buffalo AKG Art Museum, New York (formerly the Albright-Knox Art Gallery), also includes a robust installation of drawings, prints, and sketchbooks. The retrospective contextualizes Whitney’s practice in relation to his artistic community as well as his influences—from the history of art and architecture to quilting, textiles, and jazz.
Stanley Whitney, Endless Time, 2017, Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York © Stanley Whitney. Photo: courtesy Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York
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Stanley Whitney
Dance with Me Henri
November 20, 2022–April 23, 2023
Baltimore Museum of Art
artbma.org
This exhibition highlights Stanley Whitney’s recently commissioned stained-glass windows in the Ruth R. Marder Center for Matisse Studies. Whitney selected a group of works on paper by Henri Matisse, to show in dialogue with sketches for the windows and his own prints, unfolding the relationship between the two artists and their experiments with line and color.
Installation view, Stanley Whitney: Dance with Me Henri, Baltimore Museum of Art, November 11, 2022–April 23, 2023. Artwork © Stanley Whitney. Photo: Mitro Hood
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Stanley Whitney
The Italian Paintings
April 23–November 27, 2022
Palazzo Tiepolo Passi, Venice
www.labiennale.org
The Italian Paintings is a look at Stanley Whitney’s practice over the last three decades seen through an Italian lens. The title refers to a body of work that encompasses pivotal transitional paintings from the time Whitney spent in Rome in the early 1990s, through to the work created during subsequent summers in his studio in Parma. The presentation considers, for the first time, the important influence of Italian art and architecture on Whitney’s oeuvre. The exhibition is presented by the future Buffalo AKG Art Museum and is an official Collateral Event at the Biennale Arte 2022.
Installation view, Stanley Whitney: The Italian Paintings, Palazzo Tiepolo Passi, Venice, April 23–November 27, 2022. Artwork © Stanley Whitney
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Stanley Whitney in
Sensory Poetics: Collecting Abstraction
July 8–October 16, 2022
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York
www.guggenheim.org
Sensory Poetics: Collecting Abstraction brings together highlights from the museum’s growing collection of contemporary art. Acquired over the past ten years, and shown at the museum for the first time, this selection of artworks reflects developments in painting, sculpture, and video from the 1960s to today that manifest in a turn toward gesture as a response to the constraint of Minimalism. Evident in the exhibited works is an appeal to the human hand, whether through the tactility of materials or the gestural marks that comprise the compositions. Work by Stanley Whitney is included.
Stanley Whitney, Untitled, 1997, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York © Stanley Whitney. Photo: Allison Chipak
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Stanley Whitney in
Panorama | Monopoli
September 1–4, 2022
Various locations in Monopoli, Italy
italics.art
Panorama brings together around seventy works from the fifteenth century to present day by sixty international artists. The exhibition takes place in twenty venues across the historic center of Monopoli, a medieval seaside town on the Adriatic coast of Puglia, including palaces, churches, piazzas, and votive shrines tucked away in alleyways and lanes. This is the second in a series of exhibitions, each with the title Panorama, organized by Italics, a consortium of Italian art galleries that work together, both on- and off-line, to highlight Italy’s extraordinary cultural and artistic heritage and introduce international audiences to some of the most fascinating places in the country. Work by Stanley Whitney is included, exhibited in the Palazzo Martinelli along with a seventeenth-century painting by Antonio Zanchi.
Stanley Whitney, Howl, 2022 © Stanley Whitney
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Stanley Whitney in
Blue Is the Color of Your Eyes: On Materiality and Abstraction in the Moderna Museet Collection
February 2, 2019–March 1, 2020
Moderna Museet, Malmö, Sweden
www.modernamuseet.se
In Blue Is the Color of Your Eyes, works by Louise Bourgeois are presented alongside key paintings and sculptures from the 1940s to the present by international artists in the Moderna Museet’s collection. Guiding the viewer through an examination of issues of materiality and abstraction, the exhibition highlights a bodily approach to the creative process as well as social issues. Work by Stanley Whitney is included.
Stanley Whitney, Off Square, 2016, Moderna Museet, Stockholm © Stanley Whitney
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Documenta 14
April 8–September 17, 2017
Various locations in Kassel, Germany, and Athens
www.documenta14.de
Sixteen paintings by Stanley Whitney were on display in Kassel, Germany, and in Athens as part of the fourteenth edition of Documenta, which takes place every five years. Documenta 14 included the presentation of works by more than 160 international artists, as well as concerts, screenings, readings, performances, and discussions.
Installation view, Documenta 14, Documenta Halle, Kassel, Germany, June 10–September 17, 2017. Artwork © Stanley Whitney
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Focus
Stanley Whitney
January 21–April 2, 2017
Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Texas
www.themodern.org
This exhibition explores Stanley Whitney’s investigations into the intricate possibilities of color and form in the realm of abstract painting. Since the mid-1970s, Whitney has been known for his multicolored, irregular grids on square canvases. Taking the essentialist grid of Minimalism as his cue, his configurations are loose, uneven geometric lattices comprised of vibrant stacked color blocks that vary in hue, shape, and the handling of the paint.
Stanley Whitney, SunRa 2016, 2016 © Stanley Whitney
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Stanley Whitney
Dance the Orange
July 16–October 25, 2015
Studio Museum in Harlem, New York
studiomuseum.org
Stanley Whitney: Dance the Orange features paintings and drawings created between 2008 and 2015. Following time spent in Italy and Egypt in the 1990s, Whitney developed the distinctive approach to color and space for which he is now known. Whitney’s paintings are rhythmic and lyrical, made according to a dynamic fusion of preordained structure and improvisation, with vibrant, irregular lozenges of color stacked loosely in square formats. The drawings, with their spontaneous, energetic lines, give insight into the parallel importance of this more intimate activity to his art practice.
Installation view, Stanley Whitney: Dance the Orange, Studio Museum in Harlem, New York, July 16–October 25, 2015. Artwork © Stanley Whitney