In the News

“Enchanting.” —The New Yorker

Peter Schjeldahl’s audio slideshow on the Biennial. —The New Yorker

“[The Whitney Biennial] presents a new model that is broader, more contemporary and more sincere than anything that has come before it.” —T Magazine, New York Times 

“One of the best Whitney Biennials in recent memory may or may not contain a lot more outstanding art than its predecessors, but that’s not the point. The 2012 incarnation is a new and exhilarating species of exhibition, an emerging curatorial life form, at least for New York.” —The New York Times 

“Every two years, the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City weighs in on what matters in the art world by mounting an exhibition that lays claim to showing the best, brightest and hippest that contemporary art has to offer. This Whitney Biennial, the 76th in the museum’s history, is no exception . . .” —NPR

“The 2012 Whitney Biennial is a quiet, incomplete manifesto. It reimagines what a biennial is and explores the ways artists are taking matters into their own hands, resetting the agenda, and fighting back against an art world that had been focused on selling, buzz, and bigness.” —New York Magazine 

“Museum shows rarely offer this kind of intimacy. I found myself surrendering to the art and participating in the premise in a unique way—slowing down and spending a lot of time with each work, thinking and musing about concepts and materials and love, life, and death, connecting one piece with another, and stretching my perceptions in ways I haven’t in a while.” —New York

“A refreshing departure from the typical collection sampler. It also hints at some of the possibilities of a downtown Whitney, one with more breathing room for large installations and other difficult-to-show works.” —The New York Times