The Whitney Museum of American Art in New York has added more than 250 works of art to its collection since last April, including eighty-eight works by forty artists who participated in the 2019 Whitney Biennial. Among the artists whose works will join the institution’s holdings for the first time are Laura Aguilar, Maria Berrio, Jonathan Lyndon Chase, ektor garcia, Ajay Kurian, Wendy Red Star, and Wallace & Donahue.
“Through the biennial and our emerging artist program, the Whitney is committed to adding new voices to our collection, but we’re also deepening our relationships with artists already represented in it, with acquisitions of works by, among others, Alex Da Corte, Simone Leigh, Jaune Quick-to-See Smith, and Hank Willis Thomas,” Scott Rothkopf, senior deputy director and chief curator, said in a statement. “We are particularly proud that our recent gifts and purchases highlight the museum’s increased scholarship on and engagement with Latinx and Indigenous artists.”
The Whitney’s collection, which includes nearly 25,000 works created by approximately 3,500 artists during the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, begins with Ashcan School painting and follows the major movements of the twentieth century in America. Its new acquisitions include John Edmonds’s portraits Tête d’Homme, 2018, and The Villain, 2018; Janiva Ellis’s canvas Uh Oh, Look Who Got Wet, 2019; Kota Ezawa’s projected video animation National Anthem, 2018, on the NFL players who took a knee during “The Star-Spangled Banner” in protest of police violence; and Daniel Lind-Ramos’s Maria-Maria, 2019, an assembled sculpture made of found materials that references the Virgin Mary and Hurricane Maria.