What It Becomes is an exhibition of new and rarely seen works from the Whitney's collection that encourage us to think expansively about what drawing is and can be. Featuring the work of 11 artists, including Darrel Ellis, David Hammons, Ana Mendieta, Catherine Opie, and Wendy Red Star, What It Becomes explores how artists have turned to drawing as a way to reveal the unseen and make the familiar unrecognizable. The exhibition takes its title from the words of artist Toyin Ojih Odutola, who, describing how the act of drawing transforms the source imagery she works from, remarks, "What it becomes is what I'm interested in." The processes and techniques inherent to drawing play a fundamental role in the creation of the works presented here, whether they take shape on paper, in photography, or through video. Some artists employ maneuvers like inscription and erasure to alter or reclaim existing images. Others emphasize the tactility of the medium by using their bodies as drawing tools or surfaces, transforming their likeness in the process. Harnessing drawing's relationship to touch and its ability to convey change, the artists explore the malleable nature of identity and the possibility of shaping and redefining oneself.
What It Becomes is organized by Scout Hutchinson, Curatorial Fellow.
As the preeminent institution devoted to the art of the United States, the Whitney Museum of American Art presents the full range of twentieth-century and contemporary American art, with a special focus on works by living artists. The Whitney is dedicated to collecting, preserving, interpreting, and exhibiting American art, and its collection--arguably the finest holding of twentieth-century American art in the world--is the Museum's key resource. The Museum's signature exhibition, the Biennial, is the country's leading survey of the most recent developments in American art.
Innovation has been a hallmark of the Whitney since its beginnings. It was the first museum dedicated to the work of living American artists and the first New York museum to present a major exhibition of a video artist (Nam June Paik in 1982). Such figures as Jasper Johns, Cy Twombly, and Cindy Sherman were given their first museum retrospectives by the Whitney. The Museum has consistently purchased works within the year they were created, often well before the artists became broadly recognized. The Whitney was the first museum to take its exhibitions and programming beyond its walls by establishing corporate-funded branch facilities, and the first museum to undertake a program of collection-sharing (with the San Jose Museum of Art) in order to increase access to its renowned collection.
Designed by architect Renzo Piano and situated between the High Line and the Hudson River, the Whitney's new building vastly increases the Museum’s exhibition and programming space, providing the first comprehensive view of its unsurpassed collection of modern and contemporary American art.
