|
|
|
The Whitney's Collection houses one of the world's foremost collections of twentieth-century American art. The Permanent Collection of some eighteen thousand works encompasses paintings, sculptures, multimedia installations, drawings, prints, and photographs. The Museum was founded in 1931 with a core group of seven hundred art objects, man of them from the personal collection of founder Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney; others were purchased by Mrs. Whitney at the time of the opening to provide a more thorough overview of American art in the early decades of the century. Mrs. Whitney favored the art of the revolutionary realist artists derisively called the Ashcan School, among them John Sloan, George Luks, and Everett Shinn, as well as American Scene painaters such as Edward Hopper, John Steuart Curry, and Thomas Hart Benton. However, many important works by early modernist artists -- among them Stuart Davis, Charles Demuth, Charles Sheeler, and Max Weber -- were also part of her initial gift. Virtually all the works collected by the Museum for the next twenty years came through the generosity of Mrs. Whitney. For information on works currently on view, see what's on view now. To view select works from the collection, visit the online gallery on learning @ whitney. |
 |
