Artists Among Us – Details, episodes & analysis

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

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 Smith we 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