The Whitney Museum of American Art has announced the list of artists participating in the upcoming 2012 Whitney Biennial, which takes place at the Whitney from March 1 through May 27, 2012, with some programs continuing through June 10. This is the seventy-sixth in the ongoing series of Biennials and Annuals presented by the Whitney since 1932, two years after the Museum was founded.
The Whitney Biennial is an exhibition held every two years in which the Museum gauges the current state of contemporary art in America. The 2012 Biennial is being curated by Elisabeth Sussman, Curator and Sondra Gilman Curator of Photography at the Whitney, and Jay Sanders, a freelance curator. The curators began working on the research and planning of the show in early December 2010. Fifty-one artists have been selected. The Biennial comprises work—including paintings, sculptures, photographs, and installations—from both emerging and established artists. In addition to visual artists, the exhibition includes a select group of filmmakers, choreographers, musicians, and playwrights. These multidisciplinary arts will be presented in a large open space in the Museum’s fourth floor galleries.
The curators are working on the Biennial’s film program with Ed Halter and Thomas Beard, the co-founders of Light Industry, a venue for film and electronic art in Brooklyn. More details on the artists, other Biennial projects, and the schedule of events will be released in January 2012.
Curatorial Collaborations
In addition to the artists listed above, the 2012 Biennial will present two special curatorial collaborations with external arts organizations:
Arika
Arika, a UK-based group that organizes festivals of experimental music, moving image, and sound will present their first North American program as part of the 2012 Biennial. The collaboration will take the form of a week of performances, workshops, and conversations that will capture interesting threads in North American listening, including contemporary poetry, noise, and music.
Artists Space Books and Talks
As a curatorial programming partner of 2012 Biennial, Artists Space Books and Talks in Tribeca will be the site of a weekly program, curated by Artists Space, focusing on key concerns from the work of the exhibiting artists, as well as from the Biennial as a whole.
The fourth floor performance events will involve the artistic collaboration of Bentley Meeker.
