Your First Look at the 2026 Whitney Biennial

This weekend, the Whitney Biennial 2026 opens to the public. On view from March 8 to August 23, it is the museum’s 82nd Biennial, featuring artworks from 56 artists and collectives—including Ash Arder, Kimowan Metchewais, Zach Blas, Young Joon Kwak, Johanna Unzueta, and Pat Oleszko, among others—that reflect our current moment. The presentation is co-organized by Marcela Guerrero, the DeMartini Family Curator, and Drew Sawyer, the Sondra Gilman Curator of Photography, with support from Beatriz Cifuentes, Biennial Curatorial Assistant, and Carina Martinez, Rubio Butterfield Family Fellow.

Inside the 2026 Whitney Biennial

Both inside and outdoors, the Biennial sprawls the museum’s grounds, spotlighting various relationalities—the people, ideas, and objects that gain meaning not in isolation but in connection to one another. Whitewall was in attendance at the Whitney’s press preview on March 4, getting a behind-the-scenes look at the presentation, and we noticed many works centered on tech, politics, gender, family, infrastructure, and more.

There, we learned that a year-long research project to select the artworks in the show began in Puerto Rico. Guerrero and Sawyer shared that it then spread to other cities across the U.S., visiting over 300 artist studios—physically and virtually. “We were interested in thinking about places outside of the geopolitical borders of the United States, thinking a little more broadly,” said Guerrero on March 4. “We traveled for 12 to 13 months, dozens of cities. We were on the road twice a month, doing anywhere from four to ten studio visits.” 

Research Through 300 Studio Visits

“We had a long conversation about how we wanted to approach the research, and we both agreed that we wanted to be really open. So, we started by talking about certain artists we were curious about, that we hadn’t done studio visits with,” said Sawyer. “We basically compiled a dream list of all the artists we would love to do studio visits with.”

Paintings, photographs, sculptures, multimedia work, and installations that evoke tension and tenderness offer imaginative and unexpected forms of coexistence, revealing what’s going on in the world today and how many of our difficulties, joys, and quests are linked. A focus on America’s systems—like fracking in West Virginia and Pennsylvania—joined personal and international focuses for the artists, too, including family values, endurance, equal rights, performance, memory, religion, and AI.

A few of our favorite pieces were Emilie Louise Gossiaux’s “Kong Play,” 100 handmade ceramic sculptures of her late dog’s favorite chew toy, signifying a happy afterlife; Malcolm Peacock’s interpretation of a redwood tree, made of 3,500 braids handmade over the course of 10 months; and last but not least, Pat Oleszko’s playful inflatable, which originally debuted in 1995 at the World Trade Center Plaza. The latter was made by the artist at home, where she sews her sculptures together in sections, and then connects them and inflates them on her roof.

Andrea Fraser Shows Alongside Her Mother

We also loved Andrea Fraser’s wax sculptures of babies, kept in glass containers so they wouldn’t melt, representing the “emotional needs for attention, value, and care” that artworks often hold. Unique was its presentation alongside her mother’s artworks—Carmen de Monteflores’s Four Women, 1969. As Guerrero shared at the preview on March 4, the idea to show the two women’s work in tandem came from Fraser, who she had known while she worked at the Hammer Museum. 

“She sent me an email, telling me about her mother’s art, with a PDF. I was so surprised. We knew we were going to go to the Bay Area, so it was a bright opportunity to meet Carmen,” said Guerrero. “I’ll give a lot of credit to Drew, because he said, ‘The most truthful, genuine way of presenting this story is by having Carmen and Andrea in the show.”

“We both agreed that Carmen’s work was amazing,” said Sawyer. “But part of what we felt we were tasked with was showing art that had been presented in the last two years. And because Carmen’s work really hasn’t been shown, we were thinking, ‘How do we contextualize this in the context of the Biennial?’ There are non-living artists, there are deceased artists, but they have had presentations in the last two years. It felt both a recognition of Andrea, who tipped us off, but it also ended up being a more generative and beautiful story than either of us could have imagined.”

Kelly Akashi‘s Heart-Wrenching Chimney

Special for the Whitney Biennial 2026, too, is an array of outdoor pieces—on the museum’s terraces, and on a nearby billboard. For the Hyundai Terrace Commission, a multiyear partnership with Hyundai Motor, the site-specific installation on the fifth-floor outdoor gallery is by the Los Angeles-based artist Kelly Akashi. 

“Weaving together intimate personal histories with broader collective narratives, Hyundai Terrace Commission: Kelly Akashi offers a moment to reflect on memory and resilience,” said DooEun Choi, Art Director of Hyundai Motor Company. “It challenges us to consider the potential for a solidarity that transcends the individual to embrace the communal, aligning with the Hyundai Terrace Commission’s commitment to sharing transformative artistic experiences with a wider audience.”

The commission brings together works on paper, a new sculptural installation, steel relief, and an animation across the Whitney’s terrace and adjoining spaces. Of note is Akashi’s Monument (Altadena)—a reconstructed version of the artist’s chimney, which was the only piece of her home that remained after her home burned down in the Eaton Fire in January 2025.

“The act of rebuilding is not simply about material endurance; it is a deliberate labor of care, an engagement with history, and an act of reclamation,” said Akashi. “In laying each brick, my sculpture mirrors the gestures of memory itself, emphasizing that remembrance is not given, it is constructed through care and persistence. Each brick carries the record of labor and material transformation; together, they compose a new body that holds the traces of its past.”

Outdoors, as well, is a billboard artwork by Taína H. Cruz on Gansevoort Street, across from the Whitney and the High Line. Joining work by the artist in the museum, this piece, I Saw the Future and It Smiled Back, reveals a small, green-washed subject smiling with “a child-like sense of newness and anticipation.”