Artists Among Us: Recent Episodes
Whitney Museum of American Art
The Whitney Museum of American Art presents Artists Among Us, a podcast about American art and culture. We tell stories revealing the complexities and contradictions that have shaped life in the United States today. We consider the American artist David Hammons and his new sculpture, Day's End (2014–21). This is a monumental, permanent public installation that pays tribute to a long-destroyed 1975 artwork of the same name by the artist Gordon Matta-Clark. Anchored on the banks of Manhattan’s West Side and stretching into the Hudson River, Hammons’s Day’s End is sited next to the Museum and occupies the precise location where Matta-Clark’s work once stood. We follow the evolution of the Manhattan coastline through the history of the Meatpacking District, and celebrate the communities that have shaped the neighborhood where the Whitney now stands. This podcast was produced by Sound Made Public in collaboration with the Whitney Museum of American Art.
In this minisode, exhibition curator Adrienne Edwards describes the new Edges of Ailey “extravaganza” dedicated to the life, dances, and enduring legacy of the legendary artist and choreographer, Alvin Ailey.
Through an immersive eighteen-screen video installation, illuminating archival materials, an ambitious performance program, and wide-ranging artworks by eighty-two visual artists, Edges of Ailey explores a titan of modern dance whose impact reverberates across media and time, and whose beloved company, Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, remains a global cultural force to this day. Edwards takes us through her impetus and vision for the show and some of the discoveries she made along the way.
More about the exhibition: https://whitney.org/exhibitions/edges-of-ailey
The Ailey Performances: https://whitney.org/AileyPerformances
Associate Curator Jennie Goldstein discusses how Day Clean, a painting by Eldzier Cortor (1916–2015), recently found its way into the Whitney's collection. She describes Cortor's interest in depicting Black American life in the South and how he drew influences from his travels to the Caribbean, African Art, European Surrealism, and American Realism.
More about the exhibition: https://whitney.org/exhibitions/collection-1900-to-1965
See the art described in this minisode: https://whitney.org/collection/works/67747
In this minisode, teens from the Whitney's Youth Insights Leaders program interview 2024 Biennial artist Holly Herndon. The conversation explores how the artist's identity and creative process are influenced by artificial intelligence (AI). They talk about the ethical use of AI, if AI can elicit an emotional response to art, and the evolution of the art world to include machine learning models as an art form. Visit the Whitney's portal to Internet and new media art, artport, to enter Holly Herndon and Mat Dryhurst: xhairymutantx, a project that focuses on training data behind AI models, opening new possibilities for its use.
Explore xhairymutantx: https://whitney.org/exhibitions/xhairymutantx
More about the Biennial: https://whitney.org/exhibitions/2024-biennial
Know a teen who might be interested in the Whitney’s programs? Learn more and apply now: https://whitney.org/education/teens/youth-insights
In this minisode, teens from the Whitney's Youth Insights Leaders program interview 2024 Biennial artist Kiyan Williams. Williams has two artworks in the 2024 Whitney Biennial: a large sculpture of a neoclassical building made of brown soil that appears to be sinking into the ground, and a shiny chrome sculpture depicting the gay rights activist Marsha P. Johnson. The teens talk to Williams about what the sculptures mean especially when seen together and at this particular moment in time.
More about the exhibition: https://whitney.org/exhibitions/2024-biennial
Know a teen who might be interested in the Whitney’s programs? Learn more and apply now: https://whitney.org/education/teens/youth-insights
See the art described in this minisode: https://whitney.org/exhibitions/2024-biennial?section=66
Today we hear from five artists who together form the collective People Who Stutter Create. For their contribution to the 2024 Biennial, the group mobilized the Whitney’s exhibition billboard at 95 Horatio Street, across the street from the Museum and the south end of the High Line. The artists, all of whom stutter, created a public artwork that celebrates the transformational space of dysfluency, a term that can encompass stuttering and other communication differences. In this minisode, we hear from all five artists about their artwork titled Stuttering Can Create Time.More about the exhibition: https://whitney.org/exhibitions/2024-biennial
See the art described in this minisode: https://whitney.org/exhibitions/people-who-stutter-create
Today we hear from Maja Ruznic about one of her two paintings in the Biennial. She talks about finding beauty in sadness, her path to becoming the artist she is today, and the restorative power of awe.
More about the exhibition: https://whitney.org/exhibitions/2024-biennial
See the art described in this minisode: https://whitney.org/exhibitions/2024-biennial?section=53#exhibition-feature
In this minisode, we hear from Cannupa Hanska Luger about his Biennial artwork that takes the form of a tipi inverted and hung from the ceiling of the gallery. But Luger lets us know that, "The tipi is not upside down. The tipi is actually in the right positioning, in right relationship, in a right way in the world if the world isn't as upside down as it is presently."
More about the exhibition: https://whitney.org/exhibitions/2024-biennial
See the art described in this minisode: https://whitney.org/exhibitions/2024-biennial?section=37#exhibition-feature
In this minisode, we hear from 2024 Whitney Biennial artist Dala Nasser. Her work is titled Adonis River and she made it along the banks of that river, now called the Abraham River on Mount Lebanon north of Beirut. The work tells the ever-evolving story of that place and its namesake.
More about the exhibition: https://whitney.org/exhibitions/2024-biennial
See the art described in this minisode: https://whitney.org/exhibitions/2024-biennial?section=40#exhibition-feature
This spring and summer we’ll be sitting down with 2024 Whitney Biennial artists to talk about their work and what it means to be making art in the present unfolding moment. In this minisode, we hear from Eamon Ore-Giron about his series Talking Shit in which he reimagines deities from ancient Peruvian and Mexican cultures in a contemporary context to explore the idea of a living ancestral past.
More about the exhibition: https://whitney.org/exhibitions/2024-biennial
See the art described in this minisode: https://whitney.org/exhibitions/2024-biennial?section=45#exhibition-feature
Two works by artist Kambui Olujimi are currently on view in the exhibition Inheritance, open through February. Olujimi made Hart Island Crew and Your King Is on Fire in 2020 during lockdown and both paintings describe tumultuous moments familiar to us all. We sat down with Olujimi to hear more about these emotive works.
More about the exhibition: https://whitney.org/exhibitions/inheritance
See the art described in this minisode: https://whitney.org/collection/works/64950 and https://whitney.org/collection/works/65005
"There's an urgency in her work. There's a rhythm that exists in her drawings and sculptures that I'm really attracted to as well." On the occasion ofRuth Asawa Through Line we chatted with Virginia Overton about what she finds so inspiring about Asawa's work. She speaks about two pieces: a print made from the body of a fish, and an ink drawing showing the cross-section of a redwood tree.
More about the exhibition: https://whitney.org/exhibitions/ruth-asawa-through-line
See the art described in this minisode: https://whitney.org/asawa-fish and https://whitney.org/asawa-redwood
Sadie Barnette joins us in the galleries to discuss her multimedia artwork Family Tree II, currently on view in Inheritance through February 2024. The piece is a holographic vinyl upholstered couch in front of a constellation of framed images. “It's really a self-portrait as a relational way of being,” she says, “who I am based on who I am from and who I am in relation to.”
More about the exhibition: https://whitney.org/exhibitions/inheritance
On the occasion of her Whitney exhibition and as part of the Whitney's public programming, artist Ilana Savdie invited writer Carmen Maria Machado, author of Her Body and Other Parties and In the Dream House, to discuss their respective practices. In this excerpt from that program Savdie and Machdo discuss their overlapping interests, from power dynamics mediated through the body to trickery as a form of resistance. The conversation is moderated by Whitney Curator Marcela Guerrero and the exhibition Ilana Savdie: Radical Contractions is on view through November 5, 2023.
More about the exhibition: https://whitney.org/ilanasavdie
On the occasion of Fragments of a Faith Forgotten: The Art of Harry Smithwe spoke to Greil Marcus, acclaimed music author, journalist, and critic, about the reverberations felt around the world after the 1952 release of Harry Smith's highly influential multivolume Anthology of American Folk Music. "It was a sensibility—this set that Harry Smith created—that was passed on to people. Where it said to them, 'There's more in this music. There's more in this country than you ever imagined, so seek and ye shall find.'"
More about the exhibition: https://whitney.org/exhibitions/harry-smith
"The maps that I've been doing, I see them as landscapes and they all tell stories." Hear from artist Jaune Quick-to-See Smith (b. 1940, citizen of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Nation) on the occasion of her Whitney retrospective, Jaune Quick-to-See Smith: Memory Map on view through August 13, 2023.
More about the exhibition: https://whitney.org/exhibitions/jaune-quick-to-see-smith
El barrio que hoy ocupa el Whitney fue en su día un lugar de encuentro y creación de comunidad queer. Este miniepisodio rinde homenaje a los lugares donde las personas que buscaban la libertad sexual se reunían para relacionarse, relajarse, salir de fiesta y organizarse. Miniepisodio invitado: Camilo Godoy, Educador del Whitney.
Para más información sobre la historia queer del Meatpacking District, consulte la audioguía completa: https://whitney.org/audio-guides/94
The neighborhood that the Whitney now occupies once provided a place to find and create queer community. This minisode pays tribute to the sites where people seeking sexual freedom once gathered to connect, relax, party, and organize. Minisode guest: Camilo Godoy, Whitney Educator.
For more about the queer history of the Meatpacking District, check out the full audio tour: https://whitney.org/audio-guides/94
“They are watching, they show us, they embody, they personify the inanimate that our modern culture often forgets is constantly witnessing us.” In this minisode Rose B. Simpson discusses Counterculture, five watchful figures on view on the Whitney's Floor 5 terrace. Minisode guest: Rose B. Simpson.
View these artworks and access the transcript of this conversation on the Whitney's audio guide: https://whitney.org/audio-guides/90
"The earliest computer interfaces always had blackness as a sort of basis of what could be done on a computer." In this minisode American Artist considers the inception of the computer interface and asks how that origin story has shaped computation today. For whom were computers created? What purpose do they serve? Minisode guest: American Artist.
View Mother of All Demos III and access the transcript of the conversation: https://whitney.org/collection/works/65698
Is Day’s End (2014–21) an anti-monument for our time? In this episode, we return to the sculpture itself: how it makes meaning, how it fits into the surrounding environment, and what public art tells us about freedom and power.
Anchored in the Gansevoort Peninsula and reaching out into the Hudson River, Day’s End (2014–21) was designed to be permanent. But for hundreds of years, the site has been in constant flux. In this episode, architects, environmentalists, Lenape elders, and artists inform some of the ways in which the many people connected to this place endeavor to keep it alive.
A vibrant Queer community inhabited Manhattan’s Meatpacking District when Gordon Matta-Clark created a sculpture by carving into Pier 52 on the Hudson River. This episode recalls a golden age when sex, art, and creativity converged on the waterfront in the years prior to the AIDS crisis in New York City.
How did the artist Gordon Matta-Clark transform a dilapidated shipping pier into a “cathedral of light”? In this episode, we trace the decline of Manhattan’s formerly flourishing meat markets and waterfront industries. Amid the decay, Matta-Clark spotted the potential for beauty.
Our inaugural episode introduces David Hammons’s Day’s End (2014–21). As we discuss the project’s origins and site-specific nature, the layered social and cultural histories of the site begin to unfold.
The Whitney Museum of American Art presents Artists Among Us, a podcast about American art and culture. In keeping with the Whitney’s mission, collection, and programming, Artists Among Us considers the complexities and contradictions that have shaped the United States we experience today.