Verbal Description and Touch Tour: Jay DeFeo: A Retrospective

Whitney verbal description tours provide an opportunity for visitors who are blind or have low vision and their companions to experience the richness and diversity of twentieth and twenty-first century American art through vivid description and tactile opportunities. Please join us this month for a tour of Jay DeFeo: A Retrospective.

This retrospective is the definitive exhibition to date of the work of Jay DeFeo (1929–89). At the outset of her career in the 1950s, DeFeo was at the center of a vibrant community of Beat artists, poets, and musicians in San Francisco. Although she is best known for her monumental painting The Rose (1958–66, now in the Whitney’s collection), which she spent eight years making and which later languished hidden behind a wall for two decades, DeFeo created an astoundingly diverse range of works spanning four decades. Her unconventional approach to materials and intensive, physical process make DeFeo a unique figure in postwar American art who defies easy categorization. The full breadth of her work will be presented for the first time in this exhibition of more than 130 objects. This astonishing array of collages, drawings, paintings, photographs, small sculptures, and jewelry will illuminate DeFeo’s courageous experimentation and extraordinary vision. 

The Whitney is located at 945 Madison Avenue at 75th Street. Please call (212) 570-7789 or email AccessFeedback@Whitney.org to RSVP or learn more. Space is limited.