Whitney Biennial 2022:
Quiet as It’s Kept

Apr 6–Oct 16, 2022

The Whitney Biennial has surveyed the landscape of American art, reflecting and shaping the cultural conversation, since 1932. The eightieth edition of the landmark exhibition is co-curated by David Breslin, DeMartini Family Curator and Director of Curatorial Initiatives, and Adrienne Edwards, Engell Speyer Family Curator and Director of Curatorial Affairs. Titled Quiet as It’s Kept, the 2022 Biennial features an intergenerational and interdisciplinary group of sixty-three artists and collectives whose dynamic works reflect the challenges, complexities, and possibilities of the American experience today.

Read more about the exhibition in a statement by the curators.

En Español

Desde 1932, la Bienal del Whitney ha examinado el panorama del arte estadounidense, reflejando y dando forma a la conversación cultural. La octogésima edición de esta emblemática exhibición está co-curada por David Breslin y Adrienne Edwards. La Bienal 2022 titulada: Quiet as It's Kept (Aunque nadie diga nada), presenta un grupo intergeneracional e interdisciplinario de sesenta y tres artistas y colectivos, cuyas dinámicas obras reflejan los retos, complejidades y posibilidades de la experiencia americana actual.

Nos complace ofrecer los siguientes recursos y programas en español para la Bienal 2022: una guía portátil, traducciones de todos los videos relacionados a la exposición, visitas guiadas gratuitas de la exposición, y visitas guiadas gratuitas para las escuelas públicas de la ciudad de Nueva York. Todos los textos descriptivos de la exposición estarán en inglés y español en el Museo.

An abstract body of multicolored shapes that resemble flames against a black background.

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A blue-green night sky reflecting a white moon on a vast blue-green body of water with three yellow lights in the distance to the left, also reflecting on the water.

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Photograph of a blank, white billboard with some graffiti in its upper left corner, set in a desert landscape with a gray sky and mountains in the background.

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An arrangement of plastic constructs made to look like kitchen cabinets.

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Panels of colorful, painted metal siding, some of which are damaged and peeling.

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An erected, stick-club shaped object in the center with many bullets scattered outwards

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Many large transparent panels with metal, glowing text on top of them, as if floating in air

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A red set of doors against a black backdrop, with white arrows and the words "Private Club 835".

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Many books with white covers displayed on white shelves

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Black-and-white image of a female face, staring directly at the camera with her lips slightly parted.

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A woman stands with her mouth open as though singing, while holding a drum and drumstick.

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A triptych abstract landscape painting with washed-out colors and fluid lines.

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Pink text reading "I CN'T BRTH" on a yellow background.

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A figure wearing a backpack walking away down an empty, multi-lane, urban road with buildings and mountains in the background. The warm-toned light and dark sky suggests sunrise or sunset.

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An abstract painting with colorful shapes and fluid lines.

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Image of a sculpture gallery projected against a large, red cube.

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A crushed metal-like object with a ball attached to the midsection.

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A series of pink columns, interspersed with leafless trees, against a smoky, bluish-gray background. Some of the columns appear to have been tapped for sap as though they were trees. A spider and a fly have lighted on two of the columns.

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Green-and-yellow geometric canvas with the words "Save Time" in bright red letters on a sign in the top center of the composition.

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A smiling, shirtless, blonde man glances sideways out of the frame while standing in front of a wood-paneled office space that is cluttered with a bulletin board, pinned and framed photographs, a wall-mounted phone, sticky notes, and various office supplies.

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An outdoor installation of several tree-like objects with radiating straight thin sticks on top of of each.

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A small, white rowboat in the middle of an expansive, gray-blue body of water.

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Several white, two-dimensional, human-like figures placed on a backdrop of earth tone rectangles.

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A space where a couch faces three televisions and a lot of paper is stuck to the wall.

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An abstract painting with visible brushstrokes

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A large painting of the interior of a room with a couch and disco ball.

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Colorful banners with lines of text on them, suspended from a ceiling.

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Sprigs of bamboo in a small glass vase, set against a bright red background.

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Black-and-white image of protesters holding up signs (one of which reads "Black Lives Matter. There is no debate.") facing off against a line of police officers wearing riot gear.

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Abstract splotches of brown hues on wrinkled leather.

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A collage-style poster with various picture-based and wavy graphic elements overlapping against a white background.

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An abstract painting comprised of multicolored shapes.

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Fabrics hung from the ceiling or on poles

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A collection of multicolored circles against a white background.

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White-on-black representation of a dense urban map of housing plots on a grid.

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A shirtless, bald, muscular, humanoid figure with black eyes and a disfigured, marled mouth, with blue veins showing through the skin.

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A person in a room is lying face-up on the floor with limbs akimbo and beneath a pane of glass.

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Colorfully painted cylinder running through the shaft of a stairwell

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Pink-tinted image of three parked cars, with three people dancing in the back of a pickup truck. The time stamp in the bottom right corner reads "2017/01/23 08:54:45".

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Small, multicolored magnifying keychains, arranged in a straight line against a gray background.

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Blurry image of a person seen from a low angle, dressed in dark clothing and set against a dark blue background.

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A group of ceramic sculptures arranged in a cluster and elevated on a tiled plinth.

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A black and white image of a Black woman's hand resting on her chest. She wears white long-sleeved shirt.

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Red-colored paper with typewritten text, entitled "Bridge", marked up, annotated, and with the margins filled with doodles.

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A desert landscape with a blue sky, mountains in the background, and a prominent shadow cast across the foreground.

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Steel sculpture of a man with crossed legs sitting on a rectangular block

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Two architectural-looking sculptures, one smaller and made of wood, the other larger and made of metal, in a gallery before a wall of opaque windows.

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Nighttime image of a grassy yard with two trees and a graffiti-covered wall.

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An installation view of an artwork consisting of colorful, indiscernible materials and objects presented on a wire shelving unit and hanging from the wall.

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Many different kinds of coins and small, flat, round-shaped objects.

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Mustard fabric-like texture with wrinkles on it.

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A black ferris wheel more than fourteen feet tall.

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The exterior of Whitney's cafe with the text WHAT IS THE RULE OF LAW?

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Black-and-white canvas of criss-crossing lines going in all directions.

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Blue mountains as seen through a natural archway.

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A large sculpture of a bird with a body made of what looks like a large test tube filled with liquid.

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A beaded artwork showing fourteen modulated triangles tip to tip.

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Four projection screens of orange and blue tones in a blackened room.

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Videos

Events

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Essays

Making the 2022 Biennial: An Interview with the Curators

In advance of the 2022 Biennial’s opening on April 6, Breslin and Edwards look back on three years of intense collaboration, unforeseen challenges, and communing with artists. Their generative professional and personal partnership and mutual admiration are unmistakable throughout their conversation: Edwards raves about Breslin’s knack for diplomacy; he reveres her rigorous intellect and direct conversational approach with artists. The pair share their process and secrets to organizing an overwhelmingly daunting project. Their guiding principle? “It’s got to be buck wild.” A fitting expression of our strange and precarious times.

Read essay
Haciendo la Bienal 2022 del Whitney: una entrevista con los curadores

En víspera de la apertura de la Bienal 2022 el 6 de abril, Breslin y Edwards hacen un repaso de tres años de intensa colaboración, desafíos inesperados y su experiencia comunitaria con los artistas. Su profesionalismo, empatía personal y admiración mutua son inequívocas a lo largo de la conversación: Edwards elogió el tacto diplomático de Breslin; admira su riguroso intelecto y la aproximación directa con los artistas. Ambos comparten sus secretos y procesos para organizar un proyecto abrumadoramente intimidante. ¿Su principio rector? “Tiene que ser muy alocado”, un calificativo que calza bien a nuestros tiempos extraños y precarios.

Read essay

Audio Guides

Hear directly from artists and curators on selected works from the exhibition.

Listen now En Español

Installation Photography

Exhibition Catalogue

Whitney Biennial 2022: Quiet as It’s Kept book cover

The 2022 Whitney Biennial is accompanied by this landmark volume. Each of the Biennial’s participants is represented by a selected exhibition history, a bibliography, and imagery complemented by a personal statement or interview that foregrounds the artist’s own voice. Essays by the curators and other contributors elucidate themes of the exhibition and discuss the participants. The 2022 Biennial’s two curators, David Breslin and Adrienne Edwards, are known for their close collaboration with living artists. Coming after several years of seismic upheaval in and beyond the cultural, social, and political landscapes, this catalogue will offer a new take on the storied institution of the Biennial while continuing to serve—as previous editions have—as an invaluable resource on present-day trends in contemporary art in the United States.

Buy now

In the News

"After three years of soul-rattling history, this year’s survey at the Whitney Museum of American Art is reflective and adult-thinking."—The New York Times

". . . the exhibition offers a mix of styles, practices and perspectives that invite contemplation, conversation and return engagements."—Gothamist

". . . a tender, understated survey of the American art scene as it stands right now that also acts as a means of processing the grief of the last two years."—ARTnews

". . . if this Biennial doesn’t feel quite like it can let itself go fully wild, there is also a quiet weirdness to it that sincerely reflects the disorienting headspace of the present, and that is worth the trip."—Artnet News

"Delayed for a year by the pandemic, the show is exciting without being especially pleasurable—it’s geared toward thought."—The New Yorker

". . . the show feels serious and thoughtful throughout, as if dire times require us to forgo old strategies of confrontation and performative anger and get down to the hard work of understanding the world."—The Washington Post

"Revelling in difference—not just of opinion but of style, focus, and approach, it pushes for meaningful exchanges between objects and viewers alike."—Ocula

"An ambitious survey of American art that locates both hope and precarity in the mutability of the present moment."—4Columns

"The 63 artists’ works interact with one another, offering alinear, yet continuous conversation through the psyche and also the pits of our stomachs."—Flaunt

"The exhibition mimics the range of emotions we felt during the past two years, from fear and pain to joy and hope, and everything in between."—Time Out New York

". . . this year’s offering, even with the inclusion of deceased artists, radiates with the power of now."—Vulture

Curatorial Statement
By David Breslin and Adrienne Edwards

Since the start of the pandemic, time has expanded, contracted, suspended, and blurred—often in dizzying succession. We began planning this Biennial in late 2019: before Covid and its reeling effects, before the uprisings demanding racial justice, before the widespread questioning of institutions and their structures, before the 2020 presidential election. Although underlying conditions are not new, their overlap, their intensity, and their sheer ubiquity created a context in which past, present, and future folded into one another. We organized this Biennial to reflect these precarious and improvised times. Many artists’ contributions are dynamic, taking different forms during the course of the exhibition. Artworks change, walls move, and performances animate the galleries and surrounding objects. The spaces of the Biennial contrast significantly, acknowledging the acute polarity of our society. One floor is a labyrinth, a dark space of containment; another is a clearing, open and light filled.

Rather than offering a unified theme, we pursue a series of hunches throughout the exhibition: that abstraction demonstrates a tremendous capacity to create, share, and sometimes withhold meaning; that research-driven conceptual art can combine the lushness of ideas and materiality; that personal narratives sifted through political, literary, and pop cultures can address larger social frameworks; that artworks can complicate the meaning of “American” by addressing the country’s physical and psychological boundaries; and that our present moment can be reimagined by engaging with under-recognized artistic models and artists we have lost. Deliberately intergenerational and interdisciplinary, this Biennial proposes that cultural, aesthetic, and political possibility begins with meaningful exchange and reciprocity.

The subtitle of this Biennial, Quiet as It’s Kept, is a colloquialism. We were inspired by the ways novelist Toni Morrison, jazz drummer Max Roach, and artist David Hammons have invoked it in their works. The phrase is typically said prior to something—often obvious—that should be kept secret. We also adorned the exhibition with a symbol, ) (, from a N. H. Pritchard poem, on view in the exhibition, as a gesture toward openness and interlude. All of the Whitney’s Biennials serve as forums for artists, and the works on view reflect their enigmas, the things that perplex them, and the important questions they are asking. But each of the Biennials also exists as an institutional statement, and every team of curators is entrusted with making an exhibition that resides within the Museum’s history, collection, and reputation. In its eightieth iteration, the Biennial continues to function as an ongoing experiment.

Whitney Biennial 2022: Quiet as It's Kept is co-organized by David Breslin, DeMartini Family Curator and Director of Curatorial Initiatives, and Adrienne Edwards, Engell Speyer Family Curator and Director of Curatorial Affairs, with Mia Matthias, Curatorial Assistant; Gabriel Almeida Baroja, Curatorial Project Assistant; and Margaret Kross, former Senior Curatorial Assistant.

Whitney Biennial 2022: Quiet as It's Kept is presented by

Generous support is provided by

Generous support is also provided by Judy Hart Angelo; The Brown Foundation, Inc., of Houston; Elaine Graham Weitzen Foundation for Fine Arts; Lise and Michael Evans; John R. Eckel, Jr. Foundation; Kevin and Rosemary McNeely, Manitou Fund; The Philip and Janice Levin Foundation; The Rosenkranz Foundation; Anne-Cecilie Engell Speyer and Robert Speyer; and the Whitney's National Committee.

Major support is provided by The Keith Haring Foundation Exhibition Fund, the Pollock-Krasner Foundation, and an anonymous donor.

Significant support is provided by 2022 Biennial Committee Co-Chairs: Jill Bikoff, Beth Rudin DeWoody, Barbara and Michael Gamson, Miyoung Lee, Bernard Lumpkin, Julie Mehretu, Fred Wilson; 2022 Biennial Committee Members: Philip Aarons and Shelley Fox Aarons, Sarah Arison and Thomas Wilhelm, Candy and Michael Barasch, James Keith (JK) Brown and Eric Diefenbach, Eleanor and Bobby Cayre, Alexandre and Lori Chemla, Suzanne and Bob Cochran, Jenny Brorsen and Richard DeMartini, Fairfax Dorn and Marc Glimcher, Stephen Dull, Martin and Rebecca Eisenberg, Melanie Shorin and Greg S. Feldman, Jeffrey & Leslie Fischer Family Foundation, Cindy and Mark Galant, Christy and Bill Gautreaux, Debra and Jeffrey Geller Family Foundation, Aline and Gregory Gooding, Janet and Paul Hobby, Harry Hu, Peter H. Kahng, Michèle Gerber Klein, Ashley Leeds and Christopher Harland, Dawn and David Lenhardt, Jason Li, Marjorie Mayrock, Stacey and Robert Morse, Daniel Nadler, Opatrny Family Foundation, Orentreich Family Foundation, Nancy and Fred Poses, Marylin Prince, Eleanor Heyman Propp, George Wells and Manfred Rantner, Martha Records and Richard Rainaldi, Katie and Amnon Rodan, Jonathan M. Rozoff, Linda and Andrew Safran, Subhadra and Rohit Sahni, Erica and Joseph Samuels, Carol and Lawrence Saper, Allison Wiener and Jeffrey Schackner, Jack Shear, Annette and Paul Smith, the Stanley and Joyce Black Family Foundation, Robert Stilin, Rob and Eric Thomas-Suwall, and Patricia Villareal and Tom Leatherbury; as well as the Alex Katz Foundation, Further Forward Foundation, the Kapadia Equity Fund, Gloria H. Spivak, and an anonymous donor.

Funding is also provided by special Biennial endowments created by Melva Bucksbaum, Emily Fisher Landau, Leonard A. Lauder, and Fern and Lenard Tessler.

Curatorial research and travel for this exhibition were funded by an endowment established by Rosina Lee Yue and Bert A. Lies, Jr., MD.

New York magazine is the exclusive media sponsor.

More from this series

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

Whitney Biennial 2022: Quiet as It’s Kept

En Español

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Lisa Alvarado

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Harold Ancart

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Mónica Arreola

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Emily Barker

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Yto Barrada

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Rebecca Belmore

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Jonathan Berger

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Nayland Blake

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Cassandra Press

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Theresa Hak Kyung Cha

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Raven Chacon

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Leidy Churchman

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Tony Cokes

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Jacky Connolly

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Matt Connors

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Alex Da Corte

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Aria Dean

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Danielle Dean

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Jane Dickson

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Buck Ellison

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Alia Farid

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Coco Fusco

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Ellen Gallagher

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A Gathering of the Tribes / Steve Cannon

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Cy Gavin

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Adam Gordon

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Whitney Biennial 2022:
Quiet as It’s Kept