On November 14, the Walker Art Center will open Stanley Whitney: How High the Moon, the artist’s 50-year career retrospective and the first exhibition to explore and contextualize the full depth and range of Whitney’s practice. The expansive presentation charts Whitney’s career-long engagement with abstraction, from early works characterized by bold experimental palettes and a dynamic sense of rhythm, produced in the 1970s and 1980s, through to his current celebrated large-scale paintings that examine variations of color within the confines of a fluid grid. How High the Moon reflects on Whitney’s diverse inspirations, including music, poetry, American quilts, and the history of art and architecture, through major paintings, installations of the artist’s improvisatory small paintings, and drawings and prints. It also features rarely seen sketchbooks that offer a view into the artist’s engagement with written word and social and political issues.
How High the Moon will remain on view at the Walker through March 16, 2025. The exhibition is organized by the Buffalo AKG Art Museum and is curated by Cathleen Chaffee, the Charles Balbach Chief Curator at Buffalo AKG. At the Walker, the presentation is being coordinated by Pavel Pyś, Curator of Visual Arts and Collections Strategy, with Laurel Rand-Lewis, the Walker’s Curatorial Fellow in Visual Arts. How High the Moon is accompanied by a major catalogue that further illuminates Whitney’s groundbreaking work and career.
Whitney grew up in a house filled with music and knew from an early age that he wanted to be an artist. After completing his BFA at the Kansas City Art Institute, he arrived in New York City in 1968, focused on developing an abstract visual language that emphasized rhythmic explorations of color. His early paintings featured bursts of color within large swaths of empty space–color forms suspended in what he termed “landscape air”. Throughout the 1970s and 80s, Whitney continued to experiment with the relationships between color and gesture as well as foreground and background, honing his vision through both painterly expressions and active drawing. His vibrant works hummed with the compositional quality of music. Despite a range of innovations and breakthroughs, Whitney found himself on the outside of an art world that expected him to create work that spoke directly to his racial and cultural identity.
Frustrated by the dynamics of New York’s art scene, Whitney and his wife, the artist Marina Adams, moved to Italy in 1992. They spent considerable time traveling across the country as well as to other locales, including several trips to Egypt. The experiences proved transformational. Here, Whitney—inspired in particular by the façades of the Colosseum and the Palazzo Farnese as well as the stacked shelves of funerary urns on display at the Museo Nazionale Etrusco—began shifting from the amorphous openness of his earlier work to examinations of color within stricter geometries.
In 2002, at the age of 56, Whitney arrived at what would become his mature style. His square-format abstract paintings feature variations of color within a loose grid. The structure of the grid provides infinite opportunity to explore the visual and emotive impact of both subtle and bold shifts in color, as Whitney plays with opacity, transparency, and the rhythmic tension between the blocks of color and the grid within which they exist. Working at both a large and intimate scale, Whitney captures the depth of possibilities within his focused approach. Using gestural freehand to create his compositions, Whitney imbues his paintings with a sense of energy and vibration, reflecting an ongoing connection and engagement with music, especially experimental jazz. How High the Moon features a broad selection of these acclaimed paintings as well as important examples of works that capture the full arc of Whitney’s career.
“The Walker is thrilled to present How High the Moon, a retrospective that surveys Whitney’s lifelong commitment to abstraction,” said Pavel Pyś, Curator of Visual Arts and Collections Strategy. “Vibrant, bold, and brimming with color, the exhibition reminds us of the depth possibilities of abstract art—in capturing our attention, inspiring and expressing profound feeling, and provoking reflection on the indispensable role of art in everyday life.”
ABOUT STANLEY WHITNEY
Stanley Whitney was born in 1946 in Bryn Mawr, near Philadelphia. He earned a BFA from the Kansas City Art Institute and an MFA from the Yale School of Art. He has had solo exhibitions at the Studio Museum in Harlem in New York (2015), the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth (2017), and most recently as an official collateral event at the 59th Venice Biennale presented by the Buffalo AKG Art Museum. His works are included in the collections of many major museums, including those of the Buffalo AKG Art Museum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City, the Pérez Art Museum Miami, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, the Studio Museum in Harlem in New York, and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. Whitney lives and works between Bridgehampton, New York, and Parma, Italy, and is currently Professor Emeritus of Painting and Drawing at Tyler School of Art and Architecture, Temple University, Philadelphia.
ABOUT THE CATALOGUE
A major catalogue accompanies the exhibition, available in the Walker Shop and published by the Buffalo AKG in collaboration with DelMonico Books. The book features essays by exhibition curator Cathleen Chaffee; as well as Ruth Erickson, Barbara Lee Chief Curator and Director of Curatorial Affairs, at the Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston; and Pavel Pyś, Curator of Visual Arts and Collections Strategy at the Walker Art Center. It also includes texts by Kim Conaty, Nancy and Steve Crown Family Chief Curator at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; and Duro Olowu, a London-based fashion designer and curator; as well as correspondence between the artist and Norma Cole, a poet, painter, and translator; and an interview with Whitney by art historian Grégoire Lubineau.
ORGANIZATION AND SUPPORT
Stanley Whitney: How High the Moon is organized by the Buffalo AKG Art Museum.
The Walker Art Center’s presentation is made possible by Michael Peterman and David Wilson.
ABOUT THE WALKER ART CENTER
The Walker Art Center is a renowned multidisciplinary arts institution that presents, collects, and supports the creation of groundbreaking work across the visual and performing arts, moving image, and design. Guided by the belief that art has the power to bring joy and solace and the ability to unite people through dialogue and shared experiences, the Walker engages communities through a dynamic array of exhibitions, performances, events, and initiatives. Its multiacre campus includes 65,000 sq. ft. of exhibition space, the state-of-the-art McGuire Theater and Walker Cinema, and ample green space that connects with the adjoining Minneapolis Sculpture Garden. The Garden, a partnership with the Minneapolis Park & Recreation Board, is one of the first urban sculpture parks of its kind in the United States and home to the beloved Twin Cities landmark Spoonbridge and Cherry by Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen. Recognized for its ambitious program and growing collection of more than 15,500 works, the Walker embraces emerging art forms and amplifies the work of artists from the Twin Cities and from across the country and the globe. Its broad spectrum of offerings makes it a lively and welcoming hub for artistic expression, creative innovation, and community connection.
Visit walkerart.org for more information about upcoming presentations, programs, and opportunities to experience the art of our time.