America Is Hard to See
May 1–Sept 27, 2015
Running People at 2,616,216 (1978–79) by Jonathan Borofsky installed on the West Ambulatory, 5th floor, the inaugural exhibition, America Is Hard to See (May 1–September 27, 2015). Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. Photograph © Nic Lehoux
Drawn entirely from the Whitney Museum of American Art’s collection, America Is Hard to See takes the inauguration of the Museum’s new building as an opportunity to reexamine the history of art in the United States from the beginning of the twentieth century to the present. Comprising more than six hundred works, the exhibition elaborates the themes, ideas, beliefs, and passions that have galvanized American artists in their struggle to work within and against established conventions, often directly engaging their political and social contexts. Numerous pieces that have rarely, if ever, been shown appear alongside beloved icons in a conscious effort to unsettle assumptions about the American art canon.
The title, America Is Hard to See, comes from a poem by Robert Frost and a political documentary by Emile de Antonio. Metaphorically, the title seeks to celebrate the ever-changing perspectives of artists and their capacity to develop visual forms that respond to the culture of the United States. It also underscores the difficulty of neatly defining the country’s ethos and inhabitants, a challenge that lies at the heart of the Museum’s commitment to and continually evolving understanding of American art.
Organized chronologically, the exhibition’s narrative is divided into twenty- three thematic “chapters” installed throughout the building. These sections revisit and revise established tropes while forging new categories and even expanding the definition of who counts as an American artist. Indeed, each chapter takes its name not from a movement or style but from the title of a work that evokes the section’s animating impulse. Works of art across all mediums are displayed together, acknowledging the ways in which artists have engaged various modes of production and broken the boundaries between them.
America Is Hard to See reflects the Whitney’s distinct record of acquisitions and exhibitions, which constitutes a kind of collective memory—one that represents a range of individual, sometimes conflicting, attitudes toward what American art might be or mean or do at any given moment. By simultaneously mining and questioning our past, we do not arrive at a comprehensive survey or tidy summation, but rather at a critical new beginning: the first of many stories still to tell.
America Is Hard to See is organized by a team of Whitney curators, led by Donna De Salvo, Chief Curator and Deputy Director for Programs, including Carter E. Foster, Steven and Ann Ames Curator of Drawing; Dana Miller, Curator of the Permanent Collection; and Scott Rothkopf, Nancy and Steve Crown Family Curator and Associate Director of Programs; with Jane Panetta, Assistant Curator; Catherine Taft, Assistant Curator; and Mia Curran, Curatorial Assistant.
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Learn Where the Meat Comes From
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Building upon the ethos of experimentation of the previous decade, many artists in the 1970s shifted away from making objects and began to embrace performative storytelling and body-oriented actions. Video technology—which was still in its infancy at the start of the decade—provided a groundbreaking new tool for personal expression, often giving voice to the disenfranchisement of women and people of color. While some of these artists were drawn to video’s formal and technical properties, others were among the generation of feminist artists who recognized the medium’s radical potential to appropriate the power structures of mass media. Suzanne Lacy’s Learn Where the Meat Comes From, for example, begins with the artist in a tastefully outfitted kitchen in a gentle parody of instructional cooking shows, such as the one popularized by Julia Child—and devolves into an absurdist, biting commentary on domestic work and the objectification of the female body. Lacy’s behavior alternately mimics that of both predator and prey, and by the end of the video the division between human and animal has all but dissolved; the hostess sits down to a properly set table complete with wine and salad and then proceeds to devour the cooked roast like a snarling, ravenous beast.
Other works in this chapter take up related concerns. Artists such as Eleanor Antin, Lynda Benglis, Joan Jonas, Cindy Sherman, and Hannah Wilke use their cameras—whether video or still—to confront themselves, exploring the boundaries of subjectivity. Others, including the Los Angeles−based collective Asco, Ulysses Jenkins, Howardena Pindell, and Martha Rosler work, like Lacy, to draw attention to the ways media shapes our perception of identity and to the inherent gender and racial biases that often accompany those depictions.
Below is a selection of works from this chapter.
STURTEVANT (1924-2014), DUCHAMP MAN RAY PORTRAIT, 1966
Sturtevant (1924–2014), Duchamp Man Ray Portrait, 1966. Gelatin silver print, sheet: 8 5/8 × 7 1/4 in. (21.9 × 18.4 cm); image: 8 5/8 × 7 1/4 in. (21.9 × 18.4 cm). Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Gift of Sascha S. Bauer and Kristen Dickey 2013.102 © Estate Sturtevant, Paris
In the mid-1960s, the artist Sturtevant began to make what she termed “repetitions” of artworks by contemporaries such as Jasper Johns, Claes Oldenburg, and Andy Warhol. She also reimagined numerous works by Marcel Duchamp (1887–1968), whose readymades were an important precedent for Conceptual art. Here she has restaged a theatrical 1924 portrait of Duchamp taken by his frequent collaborator, Man Ray. She replicated the way that Duchamp coated his face and neck in soapsuds, lathering her hair—as he had—into two stiff spikes that resemble the winged helmet of Mercury, the Roman messenger god. Through this re-creation, Sturtevant also echoed Duchamp’s ambiguously gendered self-representations, in which he frequently appeared in the guise of his female alter ego, Rrose Sélavy.
None of Sturtevant’s works look exactly like the originals (in this instance, to begin with, she didn’t resemble Duchamp). They are not copies but interpretations, alternative versions of “masterworks” that undercut conventional ideas of originality and authenticity—ideas that, in this case, the quoted work also challenged.
Events
View all-
Sun,
May 1
Anniversary Curatorial Address: The Whitney’s Inaugural Year and Beyond
1–2 pm
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Sat,
Oct 17
Learning Series Course: Art in the United States and Abroad, 1950–1975
5:30–7 pm
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Sat,
Oct 10
Learning Series Course: Art in the United States and Abroad, 1950–1975
5:30–7 pm
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Sun,
Sept 27
Open Studio
10:30 am–3 pm
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Sun,
Sept 27
Open Studio
10:30 am–3 pm
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Sat,
Sept 26
Poetry Parade for Site and Sight
6:30 pm
Audio guides
Carol Mancusi-Ungaro addresses Jay DeFeo's The Rose (c. 1958–1966)
99 Objects
Listen to selections from the in-gallery programs series named in honor of the Whitney’s new address, 99 Gansevoort Street. Artists, writers, Whitney curators and educators, and an interdisciplinary group of scholars focus on individual works of art from the Museum’s collection on view in America Is Hard to See.
Running People at 2,616,216 (1978–79) by Jonathan Borofsky installed on the West Ambulatory, 5th floor, the inaugural exhibition, America Is Hard to See (May 1–September 27, 2015). Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. Photograph © Nic Lehoux
America Is Hard to See
Hear directly from artists and curators on selected works from the exhibition.
View guide
Explore works from this exhibition
in the Whitney's collection
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In the News
“2015 was the Year of the Whitney…the cross-disciplinary approach taken by America Is Hard to See and Collected by Thea Westreich Wagner and Ethan Wagner, is becoming the model for a new generation of curators.”
—Hyperallergic
“2015 belonged to the Whitney…both my museum—and my show—of the year.”
—Adrian Searle in The Guardian
"Best of 2015: Our Top 20 NYC Art Shows"
—Hyperallergic
"The museum’s inaugural show in its new building, America Is Hard to See, tells a different story of modern and contemporary American art than the lily-white version we’re used to"
—The New Yorker
Interview: Curator Scott Rothkopf speaks about America Is Hard to See on Slate's Culture Gabfest
—Slate
"New Whitney Museum Signifies a Changing New York Art Scene"
—The New York Times
"With its abundantly sumptuous holdings, the museum tells us how we got where we are, offering a teeming lineage of the art of this country"
—Hyperallergic
"The Whitney Opens With a Winner"
—Artnews
"Review: New Whitney Museum’s First Show, America Is Hard to See"
—The New York Times
"Curators at the Whitney Museum of American Art discuss their largest exhibition to date at their new downtown location, designed by architect Renzo Piano"
—The Wall Street Journal
"The exhibition will include plenty of crowd-pleasers—Hopper, O’Keeffe, Calder’s “Circus”—but, with the Whitney’s brilliant chief curator, Donna De Salvo, at the helm, expect major twists in the conventional art-historical plot."
—The New Yorker
"The Whitney Museum, Soon to Open Its New Home, Searches for American Identity"
—The New York Times
"One of this year's most anticipated art world events"
—Huffington Post