The Whitney Museum’s “Untitled (America)” exhibition is a reinstallation of the museum’s holdings from the 1900s to the early 1980s. Having opened in July 2025, this show presents themes of abstraction, figuration, pop culture, and landscape traditions.
The piece that lends the show its name is a fixture by Félix González-Torres. Suspended near a window, it becomes a threshold between interior and exterior. “America” exists not inside or outside but through the act of looking and reframing. In that sense, the exhibition treats America less as a place and more as a process of becoming.
American art is traditionally framed through icons such as Edward Hopper, Georgia O’Keeffe, or Jasper Johns. “Untitled (America)” features these figures, placing them in dialogue with other artists, such as Alma Thomas, Jacob Lawrence, and Kay WalkingStick. Their work redefined the concept of “America” by resisting the notion of a unified national image and instead presented it as an evolving network of perspectives and contradictions across diverse geographies, communities, and artistic styles.
Since the show emphasizes the idea of presenting “America” as an evolving concept, it should include more recent artworks that further shape this artistic landscape. The artworks in the show date only until the early 1980s, which fails to present subsequent developments in multiculturalism. Nevertheless, “Untitled (America)” invites the viewers to reconsider what “America” means by challenging its reputation as a single cultural center and repositioning it as a construct built through multiplicity.
I think the content is overall good, but I don’t walk away with a good understanding of what was shown in the exhibition from this post, aside from the Gonzalez-Torres work. This is because your description is vague. You mention themes, but art periods or names of artists could be more helpful in establishing an idea/chronology in the readers mind. For instance, instead of “abstraction” maybe mention abstract expressionism, which is more concrete. I think that your ideas on how the Torres piece works as a parallel to the show are interesting, but it falls a little flat as I don’t really know what the show is about from your review.
ReplyDeleteAnother way to improve this review could be to combine the sections where you discuss the impact of Félix González-Torres’ work. In your introduction, you explain what his work is known for. However, it would be nice to have general ideas in the introduction, then an in-depth analysis of the work in the paragraphs that follow. Rather than discuss in two separate paragraphs what the work is known for and how where it is placed in the exhibition creates a greater idea of the American Dream for audiences to reflect upon, I think both pieces of information should be in a single paragraph, where you can go into greater depth on some of his pieces, such as the style, the meaning behind them, why the emphasize the themes of the exhibition, etc.
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