Verbal Description: Floor 1

Melanie Taylor: I'm Melanie Taylor, the Director of Exhibition Design here at the Whitney Museum of American Art.

The Whitney Biennial begins outside the museum and proceeds through the main level up through to the third, fifth, and sixth floor galleries.

As you approach the glass-walled entry to the Museum, large flat-screen monitors punctuate the façade, showing bright color and text based videos by artist Tony Cokes. Passing through the glass revolving doors into the Museum's light-bathed lobby, you'll see the gift shop and admission desks to the left and colorful text-based fabric banners overhead by Renée Green. To the right is the Museum café and the Eckel Gallery, where Biennial artists Moved by the Motion have staged a video installation on the theme of Moby Dick.

In contrast to the bright Lobby with its views to the Hudson River, the Eckel Gallery is darkened and mysterious. As you enter, only the curving back of a freestanding wall is visible, strangely intersected by a pitched stage clad in distressed wood like a ship's deck. As you follow this wall around to the other side, you begin to glimpse the video projected on the curved wall and see that you can ascend the roughly 25 foot square stage filling the small gallery like a ship in a bottle.

In the Whitney's main staircase, spanning from the coat check up through to the fifth floor, is a cylindrical canvas painting by the artist Rodney McMillian.