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Art & Design|Whitney Museum Announces 2026 Biennial Curators
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/06/arts/design/whitney-museum-2026-biennial-curators.html
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Marcela Guerrero and Drew Sawyer will organize the 82nd edition of the museum’s signature survey of contemporary American art.
Aug. 6, 2024, 10:00 a.m. ET
The Whitney Museum of American Art has named two curators from its ranks to organize the next edition of its Biennial, what is arguably the most important art show in the United States. The 2026 exhibition will be helmed by Marcela Guerrero, who is known for elevating the work of Latin American artists, and Drew Sawyer, a photography curator who joined the institution last year from the Brooklyn Museum.
“This is a huge endeavor,” said Guerrero, 44, who also said that she was excited to partner with Sawyer, 42. “He has a great eye; great discipline.”
Both curators have received praise for organizing exhibitions that quickly became must-sees in New York. Guerrero was promoted last year from an assistant curatorial position after her exhibition on Puerto Rican art in the wake of Hurricane Maria. (The show was billed as the first scholarly exhibition on Puerto Rican art at a major American institution in nearly 50 years.)
Sawyer recently finished his tenure at the Brooklyn Museum with “Copy Machine Manifestos: Artists Who Make Zines,” an exhibition about zine culture that he organized with the art historian Branden Joseph. The art critic Martha Schwendener called the show “an echo from the past, but also a blueprint for future generations of artists and dissidents.” Sawyer has curated his first show at the Whitney, opening Aug. 24: “Mark Armijo McKnight: Decreation,” which features this emerging photographer’s black and white prints of anonymous nude people in stark landscapes.
Scott Rothkopf, the director of the Whitney, said that both curators excel at finding new voices. “I see the Biennial more and more as an engine that moves the whole museum forward,” he said in an interview. “They are both fantastic talent scouts who think broadly and are able to synthesize really interesting strands of contemporary art.”
The modern format of the Whitney Biennial started in 1973, though the museum has produced regular surveys of contemporary art since 1937. It has become a defining feature of the institution, playing its role as a cultural barometer and occasional lightning rod.
