The Whitney Museum houses one of the world's foremost collections of twentieth-century American art encompassing paintings, sculptures, multimedia installations, drawings, prints, and photographs. The Museum was founded in 1931 with a core group of art objects, many from the personal collection of founder Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney; others were purchased by Mrs. Whitney at the time of the opening to provide a more thorough overview of American art in the early 20th century. Mrs. Whitney favored the art of the revolutionary artists such as the Ashcan School and realists such as Edward Hopper a … (read more)

The Whitney Museum houses one of the world's foremost collections of twentieth-century American art encompassing paintings, sculptures, multimedia installations, drawings, prints, and photographs. The Museum was founded in 1931 with a core group of art objects, many from the personal collection of founder Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney; others were purchased by Mrs. Whitney at the time of the opening to provide a more thorough overview of American art in the early 20th century. Mrs. Whitney favored the art of the revolutionary artists such as the Ashcan School and realists such as Edward Hopper and American Scene painters. Her initial gift though also comprised many important works by early modernists - Stuart Davis, Charles Demuth, Charles Sheeler, Max Weber, and others. Virtually all the works collected by the Museum for the next twenty years came through the generosity of Mrs. Whitney. The Museum has always been committed to purchasing the work of living artists, particularly those who were young and not well known. It has been a long-standing tradition of the Whitney to purchase works from the Museum's Annual and Biennial exhibitions, which began in 1932 as a showcase for recent American art.

The Museum owes its modern granite structure to the Bauhaus-trained architect Marcel Breuer (1902-1981). To design a third home for the Museum — which had gradually migrated northward from its original location on West 8th Street to West 54th Street — Breuer worked with Hamilton Smith, creating a strong modernist statement in a neighborhood of traditional architecture. Considered somber and heavy at the time of its completion in 1966, Breuer's building has come to be recognized as one of New York City’s most notable buildings and representative of the Whitney's approach to art.

Courtesy of the Whitney, condensed and adapted

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945 Madison Avenue at 75th Street
New York
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