Issue link: https://read.dmtmag.com/i/272257
he Whitney Biennial is famous for present- ing a varied slice of American contemporary art: artists, established and emerging, who hail from across the United States, work in media that cross genres and styles—and often bend barriers, too. This year, its 77th iteration and the last to take place in its Marcel Breuer-designed home on Madison Avenue before the Whitney's move downtown, will be the same and different, with a trio of curators presenting the work of 103 artists and collectives, more than twice those included in 2012's edition. By each claiming a floor of the building and dividing up the artwork "organically," as Whitney curator Jay Sanders says, the Biennial curators are injecting just enough logic into the madness. Each curator brings a specific predilection: Stuart Comer is chief cura- tor of media and performance art at the Museum of Modern Art; Anthony Elms is associate curator at Philadelphia's Institute of Contemporary Art and editor of WhiteWalls, a fine art publisher distributed through the Uni- versity of Chicago Press; and Michelle Grabner is a professor and chair of the painting and drawing department at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, as well as a visiting professor/senior critic at Yale, founder of two alternative art spaces in the Midwest and an exhibiting painter. While no overarching theme unites the work, the show is populated with art by creators working in multiple genres—think poets who paint and filmmakers who sculpt. Comer's section highlights art by artists who work "at the intersection of political movements and personal statements, ad- dressing global shifts in vibrant and variable ways." Citing the question Breuer posed in his plans for the Whitney—"What should a museum look like, a museum in Manhattan?"—Elms offers a pluralistic response, exhibit- ing work that gestures toward history and a multiplicity of voices. Grabner skews toward artists who wield their influence in unique or unconventional ways. "Some are independent-minded creators who feel their work is best served by maintaining a distance from the geographic and commercial cen- ters of the art world; some are teachers; some are 'artist's artists;' others challenge art institutions," she says. Collectives like The Yams, short for HowDoYouSayYaminAfrican?, whose 38 musicians, poets, actors, visual artists and writers contributed a film opera on race and black identity, and Public Collectors—a Chicago- based project by Marc Fischer that offers a platform for odd, often unclas- sifiable collections that slip through the cracks of public institutions to present what they've amassed—push the show's boundaries into activist and public realms. With work by Gary Indiana, Sheila Hicks, Jimmie Durham and writer David Foster Wallace, live performances and large-scale art, one thing is becoming clear: the Whitney Biennial is not leaving uptown quietly. 116 CULTURED T