“Whitney Biennial 2022: Quiet as It’s Kept,” in the works since 2019, is currently on view at the Whitney Museum of American Art through September 5. The impressive 80th edition, curated by the resilient team of Adrienne Edwards and David Breslin, and presented by Tiffany & Co., echoes and reshapes the biennial put into motion in 1932. In a dynamic presentation, unprecedented in its form and liberated spirit, 63 artists—including Yto Barrada, Leidy Churchman, Matt Connors, Aria Dean, Alia Farid, Ellen Gallagher, Alfredo Jaar, Na Mira, Pao Houa Her, Charles Ray, Sable Elyse Smith, and Andrew Roberts—and collectives have been selected by the curators for the long-running series of special exhibitions and public programs. The event will engage the community with rich public programs: conversations, tours, workshops, and readings explore and expand upon the multifaceted exhibitions on display.
Curators Edwards and Breslin noted, “Rather than proposing a unified theme, we pursue a series of hunches throughout the exhibition: that abstraction demonstrates a tremendous capacity to create, share, and, sometimes withhold, meaning; that research-driven conceptual art can combine the lushness of ideas and materiality; that personal narratives sifted through political, literary, and pop cultures can address larger social frameworks; that artworks can complicate what ‘American’ means by addressing the country’s physical and psychological boundaries; and that our ‘now’ can be reimagined by engaging with under-recognized artistic models and artists we’ve lost.”
