Shifting Landscapes

Through Jan 2026

Vehicles driving through a dimly lit tunnel with blurred lights creating a sense of motion.

On view
Floor 6

Open: Nov 1, 2024–Jan 2026

While the landscape genre has long been associated with picturesque vistas, Shifting Landscapes considers a more expansive interpretation of the category, exploring how evolving political, ecological, and social issues motivate artists as they attempt to represent the world around them. Drawn from the Whitney’s collection, the exhibition features works from the 1960s to the present and is organized according to distinct thematic sections. Some of these coalesce around material and conceptual affinities: sculptural assemblages formed from locally sourced objects, ecofeminist approaches to land art, and the legacies of documentary landscape photography. Others are tied to specific geographies, such as the frenzied cityscape of modern New York or the experimental filmmaking scene of 1970s Los Angeles. Still others show how artists invent fantastic new worlds where humans, animals, and the land become one. Whether depicting the effects of industrialization on the environment, grappling with the impact of geopolitical borders, or proposing imagined spaces as a way of destabilizing the concept of a “natural” world, the works gathered here bring ideas of land and place into focus, foregrounding how we shape and are shaped by the spaces around us.

Shifting Landscapes is organized by Jennie Goldstein, Jennifer Rubio Associate Curator of the Collection; Marcela Guerrero, DeMartini Family Curator; Roxanne Smith, Senior Curatorial Assistant; with Angelica Arbelaez, Rubio Butterfield Family Fellow; with thanks to Araceli Bremauntz-Enriquez and J. English Cook for research support.

Generous support for Shifting Landscapes is provided by Judy Hart Angelo and the Henry Luce Foundation.

Major support for Shifting Landscapes is provided by Judy Hart Angelo, the Henry Luce Foundation, and the Whitney’s National Committee.

Significant support is provided by The Keith Haring Foundation Exhibition Fund.

Aunque la pintura paisajista se ha asociado durante mucho tiempo con vistas pintorescas, Paisajes cambiantes considera una interpretación más amplia de esta categoría, explorando cómo la evolución de los temas políticos, ecológicos y sociales motiva a artistas cuando buscan representar el mundo que les rodea. La exhibición presenta obras de la colección del Whitney que abarcan desde la década de 1960 hasta el presente y está organizada en distintas secciones temáticas. Ciertas obras giran en torno a afinidades materiales y conceptuales: ensamblajes escultóricos construidos con objetos obtenidos localmente, enfoques ecofeministas del arte ambiental, los legados de la fotografía paisajista documental. Otras están vinculadas a geografías específicas, como los frenéticos paisajes urbanos del Nueva York moderno o la escena cinematográfica experimental de Los Ángeles en los años setenta. Algunas, muestran cómo artistas inventan mundos nuevos y fantásticos donde los seres humanos, los animales y la tierra se vuelven uno. Ya sea representando los efectos de la industrialización en el medio ambiente, abordando el impacto de las fronteras geopolíticas o proponiendo espacios imaginados como una forma de desestabilizar el concepto de un mundo “natural”, las obras reunidas aquí se centran en ideas de lugar y territorio, poniendo en primer plano cómo la gente da forma y a la vez es formada por los espacios que nos rodean.

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Earth art and ecofeminism—artistic and philosophical movements of the 1960s and 1970s—proposed new frameworks for how we view and experience our shared planet. While Earth art marked a conceptual turn toward engaging directly with the forms of nature and the land, ecofeminism put forward ideas about appreciating and protecting the environment within anticolonial and feminist perspectives. The works in this gallery represent the roots and legacies of these movements, exploring the interconnectivity of the natural world and humanity’s place within it.

Here artists celebrate nature’s vastness and ephemerality in works that stand as artistic counterpoints to human-centered thinking. Some, including Carlos Villa, Gordon Matta-Clark, and Michelle Stuart, deal directly with natural forms and use organic materials or else the landscape itself in diverse ways. Others, such as Nancy Holt, offer more embodied ways of experiencing the world, while still others, including Carolina Caycedo and Maya Lin, draw attention to regionally specific environmental concerns.

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A tall, black metal pole with a T-shaped top stands upright on a gray floor against a light gray background.

This work is one of Nancy Holt’s earliest Locators, a series of works that she described as “seeing devices” which aimed to redefine the viewer’s relationship with their surroundings through subtle interventions in spatial context. Here, an industrial metal pipe affixed to the ground directs the viewer’s attention to a specific point (or “locus”) in the corner of the wall. When viewed through the pipe, the painted black shape transforms into a perfect circle surrounded by a halo of light, resembling a total eclipse. Holt’s Locators transform ordinary views into perceptual experiences that encourage a heightened awareness of light, shadow, and perspective. These early sculptures laid the groundwork for Holt’s later monumental earthworks, part of a lifelong exploration into the nature of vision and site-specificity.