Time Management Techniques

Sept 24, 2022–Jan 8, 2023

A slightly warped black and white image of a busy street with people walking along the sidewalk and cars in the intersection.
A slightly warped black and white image of a busy street with people walking along the sidewalk and cars in the intersection.

Darrel Ellis, Untitled (Street Scene), 1987. Gelatin silver print: sheet, 11 × 14 in. (27.9 × 35.6 cm); image, 9 1/2 × 12 1/4 in. (24.1 × 31.1 cm). Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; purchase with funds from the Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation, Inc. in memory of Jon D. Smith Jr. © Estate of Darrel Ellis

Time Management Techniques showcases photography by artists who examined the medium’s relationship to time between 1968 and 2019. Drawn from the Whitney’s permanent collection, the exhibition features many recent acquisitions alongside works that have never before been exhibited. Each of the artists, despite employing vastly different techniques, aesthetics, and conceptual frameworks, works against the immediacy often associated with photography to reflect a passage of time that is slowed down, expanded, or nonlinear.

Some artists employ a personal archive, reaching back into their individual and familial histories to challenge the linear way stories are often told. Others use photography for its self-referential properties, recording the duration and labor of making photographs and allowing the process to dictate the final form. Still others consider performance and photography together, using the camera to mark a moment and suggest countless more that remain uncaptured. By making works that reflect on varieties of duration, all of these artists reveal the slipperiness of time and articulate the artificial ways we attempt to divide, mark, and come to terms with its passing.

This exhibition is organized by Elisabeth Sherman, Assistant Curator at the Whitney Museum of American Art.

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EJ Hill

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EJ Hill’s contribution to the exhibition Made in L.A. (2018) at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles was a performance in which—every hour the museum was open to the public, six days a week for three months—Hill stood on Altar (for victors past, present, and future) a sculpture he created to resemble the podium athletes stand on for award ceremonies. During his one day off per week, Hill made photographs while walking around Los Angeles. Drawn from that series, this image depicts a monument in the Los Angeles National Cemetery honoring the veterans of the 1898 Spanish-American War, which was designed by Roger Noble Burnham, erected in 1950, and rebuilt in 1973 after the original was destroyed in a 1971 earthquake. 

  • A photograph of three white sculptures of people taken from below with palm trees in the background.
    A photograph of three white sculptures of people taken from below with palm trees in the background.

    EJ Hill, An Extended Hand (after Roger Noble Burnham), 2018. Inkjet print, 52 1/8 × 34 9/16 in. (132.4 × 87.8 cm). Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; purchase with funds from the Director’s Discretionary Fund 2019.377. © EJ Hill

Artists

Essay

Still life photograph of various foods—including empty pistachio shells, root vegetables, bread loaves, and mushrooms—atop a gingham blanket.

Timeless Form

By Elisabeth Sherman, Assistant Curator

Read essay

Explore works from this exhibition
in the Whitney's collection

View 115 works

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.