Where We Are: Selections from the Whitney’s Collection, 1900–1960

Apr 28, 2017–June 2, 2019

painting of industrial buildings
painting of industrial buildings

Charles Demuth (1883‑1935), Buildings, Lancaster, 1930. Oil and graphite pencil on composition board, 24 1/8 × 20 1/8in. (61.3 × 51.1 cm). Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; gift of an anonymous donor 58.63

Focusing on works made from 1900 to 1960, Where We Are traces how artists have approached the relationships, institutions, and activities that shape our lives. Drawn entirely from the Whitney’s holdings, the exhibition is organized around five themes: family and community, work, home, the spiritual, and the nation. During the six decades covered here, the United States experienced war and peace, economic collapse and recovery, and social discord and progress. American artists responded in complex and diverse ways, and a central aim of the exhibition is to honor each artist’s efforts to create her or his own vision of American life. The artists and their works suggest that our sense of self is composed of our responsibilities, places, and beliefs.

Where We Are, as well as each of its sections, is titled after a phrase in W. H. Auden’s poem “September 1, 1939.” Auden, who was raised in England, wrote the poem in New York shortly after his immigration to the United States and at the very outset of World War II. The title of the poem marks the date Germany invaded Poland. While its subject is the beginning of the war, Auden’s true theme is how the shadow of a global emergency reaches into the far corners of everyday life. Although mournful, the poem concludes by pointing to the individual’s capacity to “show an affirming flame.” Where We Are shares Auden’s guarded optimism, gathering a constellation of artists whose light might lead us forward.

Where We Are is organized by David Breslin, DeMartini Family Curator and Director of the Collection, with Jennie Goldstein, assistant curator, and Margaret Kross, curatorial assistant.

Where We Are: Selections from the Whitney’s Collection, 1900–1960 is sponsored by

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The Strength of Collective Man

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During the first half of the twentieth century, the United States continued its transition from an agrarian to an industrial society, experienced an unprecedented economic downturn, and recovered as the nation entered World War II. American artists responded to this seismic moment in the history of labor with works that portray the sites of production, scenes of working, and the individuals who constituted the workforce. John Steuart Curry’s The Stockman (1929) presents the keeper of livestock as heroically as it does the animals that are his products and domain. Charles Sheeler’s pristine 1932 depiction of the Ford Motor Company’s River Rouge Plant in Dearborn, Michigan, celebrates American industry even if it obscures the labor of the American worker. Isaac Soyer’s Employment Agency, painted in 1937 as the United States was attempting to pull itself out of the Great Depression, shows the tedious and frequently dispiriting work of trying to find a job. In his second inaugural address, given in the same year that Soyer’s painting was made, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt said: “In our personal ambitions we are individualists. But in our seeking for economic and political progress as a nation, we all go up or else all go down as one people.” By making labor a central theme of artistic production, American artists also were asserting themselves as fellow workers at a time of collective national effort.

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Elsie Driggs, Pittsburgh, 1927

Close up view of smokestacks
Close up view of smokestacks

Elsie Driggs, Pittsburgh, 1927. Oil on canvas, 34 1/4 × 40 1/4 in. (87 × 102.2 cm). Whitney Museum of American Art; gift of Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney 31.177. © Estate of Elsie Driggs

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painting of industrial buildings
painting of industrial buildings

Charles Demuth (1883‑1935), Buildings, Lancaster, 1930. Oil and graphite pencil on composition board, 24 1/8 × 20 1/8in. (61.3 × 51.1 cm). Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; gift of an anonymous donor 58.63

Hear directly from artists and curators on selected works from Where We Are: Selections from the Whitney’s Collection, 1900–1960.

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In the News

“This stunning installation organized by David Breslin with Jennie Goldstein and Margaret Kross depicts another tumultuous time in American history.”
—The Villager

"The show examines how American artists responded in complex and diverse ways to these events and to simultaneously honor each artist’s efforts to create her or his own vision of American life."
—Artinfo

On the Hour

A 30-second online art project:
Maya Man, A Realistic Day In My Life Living In New York City

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Learn more at whitney.org/artport

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