1959 Annual Exhibition of Contemporary American Painting

Dec 9, 1959–Jan 31, 1960

Cover for 1959 Annual Exhibition of Contemporary American Painting catalogue
Cover for 1959 Annual Exhibition of Contemporary American Painting catalogue

Cover for 1959 Annual Exhibition of Contemporary American Painting catalogue

View the full exhibition catalogue at the Internet Archive.



In the News

“If you quarrel with this exhibition, what you are quarreling with is American painting. Of course that is easy to do, but it is beside the point of the Whitney survey.” —The New York Times

“The fact that a well-selected survey of contemporary American painting makes for a moderately tiresome show isn’t the Whitney’s fault, nor even entirely the fault of American painting. It means only that in a novelty-glutted age we are so avid for distraction that we want every show to afford new excitement.” —The New York Times


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:
Maya Man, A Realistic Day In My Life Living In New York City

Learn more about this project

Learn more at whitney.org/artport

On the Hour projects can contain motion and sound. To respect your accessibility settings autoplay is disabled.