The New Whitney

[fusion_text]The question everyone in New York is asking is, “What do you think of the new Whitney?” The simple answer, which almost everyone seems to give, is, “It’s great!” First, the location: although it is harder to get to by public transportation (more on that later), it has created a new target location in Manhattan. Sitting at the base of the High Line, a few short blocks from the Chelsea gallery district amid a booming area of sleek residential towers and trendy restaurants, the Whitney Museum now justifies a half-day outing. Psychically, it has also emerged from the shadow of the Metropolitan and the other denizens of Museum Mile by claiming its own neighborhood, cementing its own identity.

The building itself looks more functional than beautiful. Someone said it reminded her of a waste management plant. But it is interesting, not ugly. It presents a different appearance from each side and never comes across as an integrated building, but so what? You can’t really see it as an entire building, except maybe from the river; it’s crammed into its space and has some of the cubist feel of Charles Demuth’s “My Egypt” painting.

What matters is the inside, and this is where Renzo Piano’s design shines. The light is spectacular on the top floor, where he has used, and presumably improved, the rooftop system he employed at the High, in Chicago and at LACMA. Even better are the large galleries on the east side, where daylight streams in, is intercepted by a baffle, and creates an airy space where artworks, the bigger the better, have room to breathe. The light wood floors add a slightly informal feel and are easy on the feet. Walls don’t reach the ceiling and appear moveable, providing flexibility to vary the layout for future shows. For now, smaller works are given more intimate galleries and the light levels are appropriately modulated.

Another immediately famous feature is the outdoor stairwell, that connects cantilevered terraces on the top floors. Not only does this provide a stimulating view of lower Manhattan and the adjacent High Line, it offers a refreshing break from the art. Serving the same purpose are inside seating areas that offer a view of the Hudson River to the west. All seats were taken on my two visits. The internal staircases, both finished and unfinished, and the artist-curated elevators (a detail I missed) provide a variety of experiences as one goes from floor to floor. Finally, I would note the small first-floor gallery, outside the ticketed portion of the museum, that displays the earliest art in the collection, principally the Ashcan painters. Most museum-goers seem unaware of this gallery, which gives you the private art-viewing experience that museums used to provide before they became crowd-pleasing tourist targets.

Now for a taste check: to better assess the collection I tried to identify my five favorite works on each floor. It was only afterward that I discovered the real depth of the Whitney’s collection when I examined the new catalogue of highlights and noted that probably 60% of the works in the book are not in the inaugural exhibition. Not that the missing objects are any better than what I saw; it’s just that the Whitney has the resources for many more shows to fill its new space.

8th Floor

• George Bellows, Floating Ice, 1910
• Morton Schamberg, Mechanical Abstraction, 1916
• Lyonel Feininger, Gelmeroda VII, 1921
• Gerald Murphy, Cocktail, 1927
• Margaret Bourke-White, George Washington Bridge, 1930

7th Floor

• Edward Hopper, Early Sunday Morning, 1930
• Richard Pousette-Dart, Within the T  , 1942
• George Tooker, The Subway, 1950
• Philip Guston, Dial, 1956
• Joan Mitchell, Hemlock, 1956

6th Floor

• Jay DeFeo, The Rose, 1958-66
• Carmen Herrera, Blanco y Verde, 1959
• Alex Katz, The Red Smile, 1963
• Vija Celmins, Heater, 1964
• Thomas Downing, Five, 1967

5th Floor

• Liliana Porter, Untitled (with Cube-Tall), 1974
• Cindy Sherman, Film Still #14
• Jasper Johns, Racing Thoughts, 1983
• Martin Wong, Big Heat, 1986

1st Floor

• William Glackens, Hammerstein’s Roof Garden, 1901
• John Sloan, Backyards, Greenwich Village, 1914

PS: The lack of a fifth selection on the 5th floor, as well as the general decline in the importance, if not the level, of art from the 7th down to the 5th floor, raises the same question I had after my last visit to MoMA (described in another blog) about the general deterioration in art as the 20th century progressed.[/fusion_text]