Calendar & Events

Wednesday, April 21–Sunday, May 1 

Wednesday, Thursday, Saturday, and Sunday noon–6 pm; Fridays 1–6 pm

Dara Epison, a Chicago-based historian, will spend her residency reading and asking questions of visitors about the cosmology of yard and what it might mean. Epison will use the ware boards to write daily thoughts and keep a list of books related to Gates’s work, including monographs on Ilya Kabakov and Gordon Matta-Clark, and volumes  on shed construction and on sacred sites throughout history.

This event is one in a series of “monastic residencies” organized by 2010 artist Theaster Gates, who will collaborate with academics, artists, and street musicians in the Museum’s Sculpture Court throughout the duration of the Biennial.

This event is free with museum admission; no special tickets or reservations are required.

Teens in the Youth Insights Leaders program went behind the scenes and created a series of original short films highlighting their unique perspectives on the Biennial. Join us for the premiere screening of their films, take a free tour of the exhibition, and share your own ideas about 2010, the Whitney Biennial.

What Should a Museum Sound Like? is a new site-specific work by David Schafer that involves a text written in 1963 by Marcel Breuer, the architect for the Whitney Museum. Schafer worked with a voice actor to record the Breuer text, and translated the floor plans and elevation drawings of the Whitney Museum into a series of composed sounds using MetaSynth, a composition and sound design program that can translate images into sound. The voice and floor plan sounds are presented utilizing the speakers in the Martin Kersels installation, as well as a digitally modeled speaker cabinet in the form of the Whitney Museum’s building. Schafer is interested in Breuer’s declarations toward the Museum, specifically his opposition to it being represented as a place of business or light entertainment. His sound work questions the relevance of those ideas today, as well as explores the relationship of language to form and space.

Special Thanks to JBL Professional / Harman International for their assistance with the audio components, Catasonic, Tom Fitzpatrick, and Machine Histories; Los Angeles, CA.


This event is one in a series, Live on 5 Songs, curated by 2010 artist Martin Kersels, whose sculpture, 5 Songs, leads a double life as a stage for performance throughout the duration of the Biennial.

This event is free with museum admission; there are no special tickets or reservations required.

What Should a Museum Sound Like? is a new site-specific work by David Schafer that involves a text written in 1963 by Marcel Breuer, the architect for the Whitney Museum. Schafer worked with a voice actor to record the Breuer text, and translated the floor plans and elevation drawings of the Whitney Museum into a series of composed sounds using MetaSynth, a composition and sound design program that can translate images into sound. The voice and floor plan sounds are presented utilizing the speakers in the Martin Kersels installation, as well as a digitally modeled speaker cabinet in the form of the Whitney Museum’s building. Schafer is interested in Breuer’s declarations toward the Museum, specifically his opposition to it being represented as a place of business or light entertainment. His sound work questions the relevance of those ideas today, as well as explores the relationship of language to form and space.

Special Thanks to JBL Professional / Harman International for their assistance with the audio components, Catasonic, Tom Fitzpatrick, and Machine Histories; Los Angeles, CA.

This event is one in a series, Live on 5 Songs, curated by 2010 artist Martin Kersels, whose sculpture, 5 Songs, leads a double life as a stage for performance throughout the duration of the Biennial.

This event is free with museum admission; there are no special tickets or reservations required.

Friday, March 12  7:30 pm
Friday, April 23  7:30 pm

The Black Monks of Mississippi are  an order of musicians and singers who temporarily submit themselves to ideals of musical restraint and semi-strict adherence to the blues form, which Theaster Gates believes  to be the most important root in the American musical tradition. The Black Monks strive to be holy, restrained, orderly, and disciplined, but they fall short. What they achieve instead is a very human response to displaced spiritual ecstasy, particularly in the flavor of the Black Church.

This event is one in a series of “monastic residencies” organized by 2010 artist Theaster Gates, who will collaborate with academics, artists, and street musicians in the Museum’s Sculpture Court throughout the duration of the Biennial.

This event is free with museum admission; no special tickets or reservations are required.