Shifting Landscapes Whitney Museum of American Art

Shifting Landscapes explores how evolving political, ecological, and social issues motivate artists’ representations of the world around them. While the art historical genre of landscape has long been associated with picturesque vistas and documentary accounts of place, the artworks gathered in this exhibition suggest a more expansive interpretation.

The 120 works by more than eighty... Show more

Shifting Landscapes explores how evolving political, ecological, and social issues motivate artists’ representations of the world around them. While the art historical genre of landscape has long been associated with picturesque vistas and documentary accounts of place, the artworks gathered in this exhibition suggest a more expansive interpretation.

The 120 works by more than eighty artists—including Firelei Báez, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Jane Dickson, Gordon Matta-Clark, Amalia Mesa-Bains, and Purvis Young—depict the effects of industrialization on the environment, grapple with the impact of geopolitical borders, and give shape to imagined spaces as a way of destabilizing the concept of a “natural” world.

Drawn from the Whitney’s collection, this exhibition features works from the 1960s to the present, most of which are on view at the Museum for the first time. The exhibition is organized in thematic sections that reflect the many meanings embedded in the idea of landscape. Together, these works bring concepts of land and place into focus, foregrounding how we shape and are shaped by the spaces around us.