The Whitney Museum of American Artwork has chosen Meg Onli, a curator on the museum, and Zack Winokur, a choreographer and director for the stage, to curate the 2028 version of the Whitney Biennial. It is because of open in March 2028.
“Each Whitney Biennial springs from a definite curatorial alchemy,” Scott Rothkopf, the Whitney’s director, mentioned in a press release. “Meg is without doubt one of the most compelling curatorial voices working right now, with a rare capacity to champion artists and convey contemporary views to the historical past of American artwork. Zack is an equally ingenious creative programmer who has turn into one of many main voices of his era by way of groundbreaking work throughout opera, theater, dance and the visible arts. Their partnership guarantees a radical new imaginative and prescient for the 2028 Biennial.”
Onli is without doubt one of the Whitney’s star curators, having joined the establishment as a curator-at-large in 2023, then as a curator in 2024. She co-curated the 2024 Whitney Biennial, titled Even Higher Than the Actual Factor, with fellow Whitney curator Chrissie Iles. Most not too long ago she co-curated the museum’s present Roy Lichtenstein retrospective (till 10 Might 2027).
“From the Whitney’s early Annuals to its many subsequent iterations, the Biennial has a wealthy historical past of reinvention that’s already giving us a lot to consider,” Onli mentioned in a press release. “I couldn’t be extra excited to discover what the Biennial may be alongside Zack, who’s such a dynamic thinker, and to see the place our conversations with artists lead.”
Winokur’s work spans dance, music, visible artwork, opera and theatre. He’s the co-founder and creative director of the performing arts collective AMOC* (American Fashionable Opera Firm), which final 12 months staged a five-week takeover of the Lincoln Heart campus on Manhattan’s Higher West Aspect. He was beforehand the creative director of Little Island, a park and cultural occasion area designed by Heatherwick Studio and MNLA that rises out of the Hudson River not removed from the Whitney. His tasks for the stage and display screen have included directing productions at Opera Philadelphia and the Santa Fe Opera, and dealing on the expanded model of The Wizard of Oz at present exhibiting at Sphere in Las Vegas.
“I’m honoured to be curating the Whitney Biennial with Meg,” Winokur mentioned in a press release. “Our shared want to centre objects and other people and the collision between them already echoes our collaboration. It’s that power that makes the dialogue together with her so enjoyable and provoking. As an artist, what excites me most is being in service to different artists, and I’m delighted to have the chance to take action within the context of the Whitney.”
The 2026 Whitney Biennial, which was organised by employees curators Marcela Guerrero and Drew Sawyer, closed in October. It was seen by greater than 550,000 guests, in response to the museum’s figures, round 75% of whom recognized as both Millennials or Gen Z, making it the youngest viewers because the Whitney began monitoring guests’ ages.
The exhibition’s 2026 version was additionally remarkably controversy-free, although the exhibition is usually a lightning rod for debates, protests and political statements. The 2019 version was led by Whitney curators Jane Panetta and Rujeko Hockley, and got here to be identified colloquially because the “tear fuel biennial” as a consequence of weekly protests and taking part artists’ threatened withdrawals over the Whitney’s vice chairman on the time, Warren Kanders, who was the chief govt of Safariland, a protection and safety contractor that manufactured tear fuel canisters that had been deployed in opposition to asylum-seekers on the Mexico-US border, amongst different supplies. Kanders finally resigned from the museum’s board; he’s at present the chairman and chief govt of Cadre Holdings, a Florida-based producer of safety and law-enforcement gear.
The 2017 Whitney Biennial, which was co-curated by Christopher Y. Lew and Mia Locks, was largely overshadowed by the wide-ranging debate over a single portray within the exhibition: Dana Schutz’s Open Casket (2016), through which the artist portrayed the well-known picture from 1955 of 14-year-old Emmett Until mendacity in an open casket following his brutal abduction, mutilation and homicide. The artist Hannah Black wrote an open letter criticising the work’s inclusion within the biennial and calling for its destruction, sparking protests inside and outdoors the museum and arguments about censorship, id and cultural appropriation.
The 2028 Whitney Biennial would be the 83rd version of the exhibition, which began out as a collection of medium-specific exhibitions earlier than turning into the Whitney Annual in 1937, then transitioning to its every-other-year format in 1973. It stays essentially the most intently watched recurring exhibition of up to date artwork within the Americas.
