(AGENPARL) – Wed 24 September 2025 https://whitney.us13.list-manage.com/track/click?u=387f59a72ae7b64ccae37d5c9&id=3623ad4350&e=59415c6e7e
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** SIXTIES SURREAL AT THE WHITNEY MUSEUM
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** OPENS TODAY!
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Opening to the public on September 24, 2025, Sixties Surreal (https://whitney.us13.list-manage.com/track/click?u=387f59a72ae7b64ccae37d5c9&id=f90c01d0dc&e=59415c6e7e) is an ambitious, scholarly reappraisal of American art from 1958 to 1972, encompassing the work of more than 100 artists. This revisionist survey looks beyond canonical movements to foreground the era’s most fundamental yet underrecognized aesthetic current—an efflorescence of psychosexual, fantastical, and revolutionary tendencies, shaped by the enduring influence of historical Surrealism and its widespread dissemination.
The exhibition recontextualizes well-known figures alongside artists only recently rediscovered, gathering works by Diane Arbus, Lee Bontecou, Franklin Williams, Nancy Grossman, David Hammons, Linda Lomahaftewa, Mel Casas, Yayoi Kusama, Romare Bearden, Louise Bourgeois, and many others. In the turbulent 1960s, these artists sought strategies to reconnect art to a lived reality that felt increasingly unreal amid rapid postwar transformation and sweeping social, political, and technological upheavals.
At the Whitney, Sixties Surreal will illuminate how Surrealism of the early twentieth century laid the groundwork for a distinctly American vernacular surrealism of the 1960s—revealing how artists across the country, from New York and Philadelphia to Chicago, Houston, Los Angeles, and the Bay Area, reimagined their realities in ways that resonate with today’s sociopolitical extremes. The exhibition title both sets clear historic parameters and suggests a provocative new interpretation of that history.
For more information, visit our digital press kit (https://whitney.us13.list-manage.com/track/click?u=387f59a72ae7b64ccae37d5c9&id=fc8b2a00b9&e=59415c6e7e) .
The digital press kit includes:
* Videos
* Artwork Images and Captions
* Installation and Experiential Images and Captions
* Introductory Wall Text
* Section Texts
* Exhibition Checklist
* Press Releases
* And More Coming Soon!
We hope to see you at the Whitney soon!
** 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=21b0aa7478&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 credit:
Installation view of Sixties Surreal (Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, September 24, 2025–Jan 19, 2026). Nancy Graves, Camel VI, Camel VII and Camel VIII, 1968–1969. Photograph by Matthew Carasella