The Whitney Museum of American Art has been a beacon for the best and boldest for years. Now, multiply the excitement by a factor of two. The Whitney’s hosting its Biennial celebration of the arts: sculpture, painting, installations, dance, theater, music and film. All aggregate in this masterful museum’s galleries through May 27.
The 2102 Biennial will be in a constant state of focused flux. Artists, and their works, will vary over the course of the exhibition.
Among the highlights:
Lutz Bacher’s work breaks down boundaries. In this instance, it encompasses an installation replete with projected video, thousands of baseballs, framed pages from The Celestial Handbook, and an instrument fabricated from a Yamaha organ and pipes.
Los Angeles-based performer and filmmaker Wu Tsang screens the film Wildness. It chronicles the convergence of two very different cultures at an LA bar, a bar that’s really a social space for transgender Latinas.
New York-based artist K8 Hardy (creator of FashionFashion zine) presents a full-fledged fashion runway show May 20. Her work crosses all sorts of line – from film to photography, to fashion.
Werner Herzog travels back in time for a look at the Dutch painter and printer Hercules Segers. It’s part ‘n parcel of an installation that incorporates projection of Seger’s works, as well as music by Ernst Reijeseger, who composed the music for two of Herzog’s films.
More film, this time by Thom Anderson. His 2003 work Los Angeles Plays Itself gets a screening – all three hours of it. The film is a meditation on how, over the years. LA has portrayed itself in film.
May 9 through 13 soprano Alicia Hall Moran (now understudying Audra McDonald in the Broadway production of Porgy and Bess) and jazz pianist Jason Moran will present a series of concerts. A number of guests have been invited to join in.
This is a chance for you to join in the celebration that is the Whitney – to intimately immerse yourself in some of the best modern art on the planet this spring. The curators have outdone themselves during this Biennial.
Story by Jerry Chandler
