PHOTO BY KAALPURUSH. VIA FLICKR.
A Trifurcated
2014 WHITNEY BIENNIAL
Bids Farewell to its Madison Avenue Home
I
“Its architecture is like a horror movie”
wrote one particularly caustic critic,
referring to the Marcel Breuer building which has housed the Whitney
Museum of American Art for nearly
Jacqueline Kennedy with Flora Whitney Miller
at the dedication ceremony for the new Whitney
Museum, 1966. Courtesy Whitney Museum.
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PEACHY
WRITTEN BY
Kitty Garner
half a century. “Stygian”, “menacing”,
“bellicose”, “somber”, and “ornery”
are some other choice words architecture critics have used to describe the
structure. It has also been likened to
a “three-tiered upside-down cake”.
Yet many academics and other fans
of Brutalist architecture championed
the rather austere nature of the building and it certainly opened to much
fanfare in 1966, with a celebrity A-list
attending the ribbon-cutting including
board member Jacqueline Kennedy.
Indeed it was in this spare domicile
that the Whitney Biennial was born
in 1973. The 2014 show will be the