Whitney Biennial 2006: Day for Night

Mar 2–May 28, 2006

A gallery filled with works of art.
A gallery filled with works of art.

Installation view of the Whitney Biennial 2006: Day for Night (Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, March 2–May 28, 2006). Photograph by Sheldan C. Collins

The Whitney's signature panoramic survey of the latest in American art is the seventy-third in the series of Annuals and Biennials inaugurated by Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney in 1932. The 2006 Biennial examines contemporary art-making in America at a moment of profound global change. The exhibition, titled Day for Night after François Truffaut's 1973 film, conjures a mood of dark intensity, shifting between beauty and degradation, doubt and conformity, the seductive and the strange.

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Press Highlights

“This [biennial] is partly about preaching to the converted. It is packaged—branded might be the better word—as a show long on collaboration and open-endedness: several shows under one roof. But it has other goals too. You wouldn’t say bliss is one of them.” —The New York Times

“Unlike most large group shows, [the Biennial] has a point of view. Because [it] is a frankly political exhibition, it demands to be judged within [the curators’] chosen political terms.” —The Burlington Magazine

The Whitney Museum in NYC with the One World Trade Center in the background, viewed from a riverside walkway on a sunny day.
The Whitney Museum in NYC with the One World Trade Center in the background, viewed from a riverside walkway on a sunny day.

Photgraph by Max Touhey

More from this series

Learn more about the Whitney Biennial, the longest-running survey of American art.

On the Hour

A 30-second online art project:
Frank WANG Yefeng, The Levitating Perils #2

Learn more about this project

Learn more at whitney.org/artport

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