Artists Announced for Whitney Biennial 2012

The Whitney Museum of American Art today announced the list of artists participating in the upcoming Whitney Biennial 2012, which takes place at the Whitney Museum from March 1 through May 27, 2012. This is the seventy-sixth in the ongoing series of Biennials and Annuals presented by the Whitney since 1932, two years after the Museum was founded.

The Whitney Biennial is an exhibition held every two years in which the Museum gauges the current state of contemporary art in America. The 2012 Biennial is being curated by Elisabeth Sussman, Curator and Sondra Gilman Curator of Photography at the Whitney, and Jay Sanders, a freelance curator. The curators began working on the research and planning of the show in early December 2010. Fifty-one artists have been selected. The Biennial comprises work—including paintings, sculptures, photographs, and installations—from both emerging and established artists. In addition to visual artists, the exhibition includes a select group of filmmakers, choreographers, musicians, and playwrights. These multidisciplinary arts will be presented in a large open space in the Museum’s fourth floor galleries. The curators are working on the Biennial’s film program with Ed Halter and Thomas Beard, the co-founders of Light Industry, a venue for film and electronic art in Brooklyn. The exhibition will be accompanied by an innovative catalogue designed by Joseph Logan with contributions from each Biennial artist. More details on the artists, other Biennial projects, and the schedule of events will be released in January 2012.

Artists in the 2012 Biennial

Kai Althoff, Thom Andersen, Charles Atlas, Lutz Bacher, Forrest Bess (paintings selected by artist Robert Gober), Michael Clark, Dennis Cooper and Gisèle Vienne, CameRon Crawford, Moyra Davey, Liz Deschenes, Nathaniel Dorsky, Nicole Eisenman, Kevin Jerome Everson, Vincent Fecteau, Andrea Fraser, LaToya Ruby Frazier, Vincent Gallo, K8 Hardy, Richard Hawkins, Werner Herzog, Jerome Hiler, Matt Hoyt, Dawn Kasper, Mike Kelley, John Kelsey, John Knight, Jutta Koether, George Kuchar, Laida Lertxundi, Kate Levant, Sam Lewitt, Joanna Malinowska, Andrew Masullo, Nick Mauss, Richard Maxwell, Sarah Michelson, Alicia Hall Moran and Jason Moran, Laura Poitras, Matt Porterfield, Luther Price, Lucy Raven, The Red Krayola, Kelly Reichardt, Elaine Reichek, Michael Robinson, Georgia Sagri, Michael E. Smith, Tom Thayer, Wu Tsang, Oscar Tuazon, and Frederick Wiseman.

Curatorial Collaborations

In addition to the artists listed above, the 2012 Biennial will present two special curatorial collaborations with external arts organizations:

Arika

Arika, a UK-based group that organizes festivals of experimental music, moving image, and sound will present their first North American program as part of the 2012 Biennial. The collaboration will take the form of a week of performances, workshops, and conversations that will capture interesting threads in North American listening, including contemporary poetry, noise, and music.
Artists Space Books and Talks

As a curatorial programming partner of 2012 Biennial, Artists Space Books and Talks in Tribeca will be the site of a weekly program, curated by Artists Space, focusing on key concerns from the work of the exhibiting artists, as well as from the Biennial as a whole.
The fourth floor performance events will involve the artistic collaboration of Bentley Meeker.

About the Whitney
The Whitney Museum of American Art is the world’s leading museum of twentieth-century and contemporary art of the United States. Focusing particularly on works by living artists, the Whitney is celebrated for presenting important exhibitions and for its renowned collection, which comprises over 19,000 works by more than 2,900 artists. With a history of exhibiting the most promising and influential artists and provoking intense debate, the Whitney Biennial, the Museum's signature exhibition, has become the most important survey of the state of contemporary art in the United States. In addition to its landmark exhibitions, the Museum is known internationally for events and educational programs of exceptional significance and as a center for research, scholarship, and conservation.