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** PRESS PREVIEW
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** Sixties Surreal
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Wednesday, September 17
10 am–2 pm
Whitney Museum of American Art
99 Gansevoort Street
Please RSVP at the link below
RSVP (https://whitney.us13.list-manage.com/track/click?u=387f59a72ae7b64ccae37d5c9&id=43731e159f&e=59415c6e7e)
REMARKS
10:30 AM, 3rd-Floor Theater
Scott Rothkopf, Alice Pratt Brown Director
Laura Phipps, Associate Curator
Dan Nadel, Steven and Ann Ames Curator of Drawings and Prints
Elisabeth Sussman, Curator
Kim Conaty, Nancy and Steve Crown Family Chief Curator
Streaming is available! If you are not able to attend in-person, remarks from the curators will be streamed live via Zoom (https://whitney.us13.list-manage.com/track/click?u=387f59a72ae7b64ccae37d5c9&id=ff69aead51&e=59415c6e7e) .
** ABOUT THE EXHIBITION
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Sixties Surreal is an ambitious, scholarly revisionist look at American art from 1958 to 1972 through the lens of the “surreal,” both inherited and reinvented. The exhibition features the work of 111 artists who embraced the psychosexual, fantastical, and revolutionary energy of an era shaped by civil unrest, cultural upheaval, and boundless experimentation.
Rather than adhering to familiar movements of the 1960s like Pop Art, Conceptualism, or Minimalism, Sixties Surreal uncovers alternate histories and recontextualizes some of the decade’s best-known figures alongside those only recently rediscovered. The exhibition considers how artists turned to Surrealism, not as a European import, but as a way to navigate the strange, turbulent realities of American life. Featuring iconic works by Diane Arbus, Yayoi Kusama, Romare Bearden, Judy Chicago, Nancy Grossman, Christina Ramberg, David Hammons, Louise Bourgeois, Jasper Johns, Fritz Scholder, Peter Saul, Marisol, Robert Crumb, Faith Ringgold, H.C. Westermann, Jack Whitten, and many others, the exhibition brings new visibility to a generation of artists who challenged mainstream narratives in pursuit of radical freedom.
Spanning painting, sculpture, photography, film, and assemblage, twenty percent of the works on view in Sixties Surreal are drawn from the Whitney’s collection. The exhibition traces how artists working in cities like Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston, and New York grappled with identity, sexuality, race, and power in ways often overlooked in canonical art histories. Influenced by, and taking permission from, the ethos of historical Surrealism—dream logic, eroticism, irrationality—these artists channeled that spirit into new and localized forms, producing work that is deeply personal and politically pointed.
From the experimental films of Jordan Belson to the biomorphic sculptures of Barbara Chase-Riboud and the visionary imagery of Jay DeFeo, the show unites diverse voices under a shared impulse to depict the world as it felt at the time, and still today—surreal.
Sixties Surreal is organized by Dan Nadel, Steven and Ann Ames Curator of Drawings and Prints; Laura Phipps, Associate Curator; Scott Rothkopf, Alice Pratt Brown Director; and Elisabeth Sussman, Curator; with Kelly Long, Senior Curatorial Assistant, and Rowan Diaz-Toth, Curatorial Project Assistant, at the Whitney Museum of American Art.
** PRESS CONTACT
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For press materials and image requests, please visit our press site at whitney.org/press or contact:
Ashley Reese, Director of Communications
Whitney Museum of American Art
(212) 671-1846
Whitney Press Office
whitney.org/press
(212) 570-3633
** EXHIBITION SUPPORT
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Sixties Surreal is sponsored by
Major support for Sixties Surreal is provided by the Barbara Haskell American Fellows Legacy Fund, The KHR McNeely Family Foundation | Kevin, Rosemary, and Hannah Rose McNeely, and the Whitney’s National Committee.
Significant support is provided by Susan Boland and Kelly Granat, and the John R. Eckel, Jr. Foundation.
Generous support is provided by Sheree and Jerry Friedman, The Keith Haring Foundation Exhibition Fund, and the Robert Lehman Foundation.
Additional support is provided by Martin and Rebecca Eisenberg, George Freeman, and Gail and Tony Ganz.
** ABOUT THE WHITNEY
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The Whitney Museum of American Art, founded in 1930 by the artist and philanthropist Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney (1875–1942), houses the foremost collection of American art from the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Mrs. Whitney, an early and ardent supporter of modern American art, nurtured groundbreaking artists when audiences were still largely preoccupied with the Old Masters. From her vision arose the Whitney Museum of American Art, which has been championing the most innovative art of the United States for ninety years. The core of the Whitney’s mission is to collect, preserve, interpret, and exhibit American art of our time and serve a wide variety of audiences in celebration of the complexity and diversity of art and culture in the United States. Through this mission and a steadfast commitment to artists, the Whitney has long been a powerful force in support of modern and contemporary art and continues to help define what is innovative and influential in American art today.
Whitney Museum Land Acknowledgment
The Whitney is located in Lenapehoking, the ancestral homeland of the Lenape. The name Manhattan comes from their word Mannahatta, meaning “island of many hills.” The Museum’s current site is close to land that was a Lenape fishing and planting site called Sapponckanikan (“tobacco field”). The Whitney acknowledges the displacement of this region’s original inhabitants and the Lenape diaspora that exists today.
As a museum of American art in a city with vital and diverse communities of Indigenous people, the Whitney recognizes the historical exclusion of Indigenous artists from its collection and program. The Museum is committed to addressing these erasures and honoring the perspectives of Indigenous artists and communities as we work for a more equitable future. To read more about the Museum’s Land Acknowledgment, visit the Museum’s website (https://whitney.us13.list-manage.com/track/click?u=387f59a72ae7b64ccae37d5c9&id=0ab2976b58&e=59415c6e7e) .
** VISITOR INFORMATION
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The Whitney Museum of American Art is located at 99 Gansevoort Street between Washington and West Streets, New York City. Public hours are Monday, Wednesday, and Thursday, 10:30 am–6 pm; Friday, 10:30 am–10 pm; and Saturday and Sunday, 10:30 am–6 pm. Closed Tuesday. Visitors twenty five years and under and Whitney members: FREE. The Museum offers FREE admission and special programming for visitors of all ages every Friday evening from 5–10 pm and on the second Sunday of every month.
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Whitney Museum of American Art
99 Gansevoort Street New York, NY 10014
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Image Credits:
Linda Lomahaftewa, Untitled Woman’s Faces, 1960s. Oil on canvas, 36 × 48 in. (91.4 × 121.9 cm). Heard Museum, Phoenix; Gift of the artist. © Linda Lomahaftewa