On View Now at the Whitney Museum of American Art


		Polaroids: Mapplethorpe on view May 3, 2008-September 7, 2008 This special exhibition traces Robert Mapplethorpe's use of instant photography from 1970 to 1975. Created in collaboration with the Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation, the show brings together one hundred objects, many never exhibited before. Included are self-portraits, figure studies, still lifes, and portraits of lovers and friends including Patti Smith, Sam Wagstaff, and Marianne Faithfull. Many of these small, intimate photographs convey tenderness and vulnerability. Others depict a toughness and immediacy that would give way in later years to more classical form. Unlike the highly crafted images Mapplethorpe staged in the studio and became famous for, these disarming pictures are marked by spontaneity and invention. Together, they offer insight into the artist's creative development and reveal his pure delight in seeing at a formative time in his career. The show will be accompanied by a book that places this early work in the context of his life-long artistic production. Robert Mapplethorpe, *Untitled (self-portrait)*,1972 Monochromatic dye diffusion transfer print (Polaroid),3 1/4 x 4 1/4 in. (8.3 x 10.8 cm) Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; gift, Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation, New York

		2008 Whitney Biennial on view March 6, 2008 - June 1, 2008 Rita Ackermann, Nun/Mother/Whore, 2006 Collage on plexiglass, double sided, 83 x 43 in. (210.8 x 109.2 cm). Collection of the artist


		The Whitney's Collection on view January 30, 2008 - June 1, 2009 In 1931, before the Whitney Museum of American Art opened to the public, Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney made a gift that became the basis of the institution’s holdings of modern art. Her devotion to the work of living artists has defined how the Whitney has developed ever since. This presentation of the permanent collection highlights four broad themes that elucidate key developments of twentieth century art in this country. They include the fragmentation and abstraction of early modernism; the realism that focused on people and society; the aesthetics of industry, city and machine; and, finally, the convergence between mental state and bodily gesture that led to new types of form and abstraction. While these developments are grounded in historical periods, their qualities and ideas also overlap and connect, extending into the work of living artists who found new ways to apply them to creative expression. Major support for this presentation is provided by the American Fellows of the Whitney Museum of American Art. Edward Hopper, South Carolina Morning, 1955 Oil on canvas., 30 9/16 x 40 1/4 in. (77.63 x 102.24 cm). Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; given in memory of Otto L. Spaeth by his Family 67.13