Frank Stella Teen Night
Dec 18, 2015

On December 4, high school students participating in the Whitney’s teen program Youth Insights Leaders hosted Frank Stella Teen Night for their peers. Leaders facilitated thoughtful activities in the exhibition Frank Stella: A Retrospective. They included creating prompts for movements inspired by Frank Stella quotes, such as “. . .walk back and forth, and inspect the depths of the pigment and the inflection and all the painterly brushwork for hours” and “My painting is based on the fact that only what can be seen is there.” Teens could interpret these quotes on their own or with other teens, as shown in the image above. 

In front of works from Stella’s Moby Dick series (1986-97), teens wrote “blackout poems” by redacting excerpts from Herman Melville’s book, Moby-Dick and using the words that remained on the text. They also discussed the impact of technology on art in relation to the artist’s use of 3-D imaging software to visualize his wall pieces and sculpture. In the Laurie M.Tisch Education Center, Leaders engaged their peers in building a spectacular Stella-inspired installation that took over most of the Hess Family Theater. 

Check out more images of the event. All photographs by Filip Wolak 

Learn more about teen events here.

Dina Helal, Manager of Education Resources