Displaying items by tag: the whitney

The Whitney Museum of American Art has received a $2 million gift from the Steven & Alexandra Cohen Foundation to support its award-winning education programs, Adam D. Weinberg, Alice Pratt Brown Director of the Whitney, announced today. Over the next five years, the Foundation's gift will provide essential support for the Museum’s education programs which serve children, teens, seniors, and the community at large.

“The Steven & Alexandra Cohen Foundation’s generous gift recognizes that education is one of the cornerstones of the Whitney’s mission.

The Whitney has appointed new officers to its board of trustees, the institution reports. Neil G. Bluhm and Laurie M. Tisch have been named board co-chairmen, while Richard M. DeMartini will now act as president. The new co-chairmen succeed Robert J. Hurst and Brooke Garber Neidich, who led the Whitney through its move to the Meatpacking District, and who will continue to serve on the board. The board’s former treasurer, DeMartini succeeds Bluhm who has acted as president since 2008.

The Whitney Museum of American Art is nearly ready to open the doors to its brand spanking new Renzo Piano-designed building in the Meatpacking district. Out with the old, and in with the new. And that means it’s going to be rehanging its world-renowned permanent collection in 50,000-square-feet of indoor galleries, and 13,000-square-feet of outdoor exhibition space, for the inaugural exhibition “America Is Hard to See.”

Today, the museum announced the full list of artists for the show. It’s going to feature an impressive 650 artworks by a whopping 407 artists, with works dating from 1900 to the present. And that cryptic title? It’s taken from a pointy Robert Frost poem about the deception of Columbus’ discovery of America.

Advance tickets went on sale Friday for the soon-to-reopen Whitney Museum of American Art, and visitors should prepare for some sticker shock. Ticket prices are now pegged at $22, up from $20 at the now-shuttered Breuer Building.

The Whitney closed its doors on the Upper East Side in October, after a blockbuster Jeff Koons retrospective. Its new location at the base of the High Line at 99 Gansevoort Street between Washington and West Streets, in a building designed by Renzo Piano, will provide the Whitney almost double the exhibition space.

When the Whitney Museum of American Art opens its new building in Manhattan’s meatpacking district on May 1, it’s the big things everyone will notice first: the sweeping views west to the Hudson River; the romantic silhouettes of Manhattan’s wooden water towers; the four outdoor terraces for presenting sculptures, performances and movie screenings; and the tiered profile of its steel-paneled facade, intentionally reminiscent of the Whitney’s Modernist, granite-clad Marcel Breuer building on Madison Avenue, which had been the museum’s home since 1966.

Its new digs, designed by the Italian architect Renzo Piano, also offer commodious interior spaces: 50,000 square feet of galleries, unencumbered by structural columns, and huge elevators that are themselves immersive environments, the work of the artist Richard Artschwager.

Hopper Drawing, which opens today, May 23, 2013 at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, is the first major museum exhibition to focus on the drawings and creative process of Edward Hopper (1882-1967). Known for his enigmatic renderings of rural and urban American life, Hopper’s paintings of seascapes, cityscapes, and their inhabitants are some of the most significant artworks of the 20^th century.

The Whitney’s exhibition is not just a presentation of Hopper’s best-known works; it is a rare glimpse into the creative process that produced one of the most lauded oeuvres in modern art. Hopper’s drawings illustrate his ever-changing relationships with his subjects, which include the street, the movie theater, the office, the bedroom, and the road. Drawn from the Whitney’s remarkable Hopper collection, which includes 2,500 drawings given to the museum by the artist’s widow, Josephine, Hopper Drawing includes drafts of some of Hopper’s most recognized works alongside their oil painting counterparts. Works on view include Early Sunday Morning (1930), New York Movie (1939), Office at Night (1940), and Nighthawks (1942) together with their prepatory drawings and related works. The exhibition also includes pioneering archival research into the buildings and urban spaces that inspired Hopper’s work.

Drawing Hopper will be on view at the Whitney through October 6, 2013.