The Making of the Whitney Museum

The new location of the Whitney Museum, near the High Line in the neighborhood known as the Meatpacking District, has been in the news lately, and has drawn large crowds. Many New Yorkers know that the Whitney Museum has been on the Upper East Side, on the corner of Madison Avenue and 74^th Street, for many years. But did you know that the roots of the Whitney Museum of American Art are right here in the Village?

Next Thursday, May 28^th, GVSHP will present art historian Avis Berman in a program entitled, “Distilling the American Flavor: Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney, Juliana Force and the Making of the Whitney Museum” Ms. Berman is an accomplished author and lecturer. You may have attended the program she did for us in January at the Salmagundi Club about painter and Greenwich Village resident William Glackens. She has written about Glackens, Edward Hopper, James McNeil Whistler, and others.

So now that the Whitney has opened downtown, revisit its original incarnation in the heart of the Village, and the lives and careers of two extraordinary women — Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney (1875-1942) and Juliana Rieser Force (1876-1948) — who created the museum and transformed the history of American art.  Their partnership not only brought about the formation of a great museum; they were also responsible for the support of hundreds of artists who had nowhere else to turn.  Among those indebted to Juliana Force and Gertrude Whitney were Village artists John Sloan, Stuart Davis, Edward Hopper, Thomas Hart Benton, and Isamu Noguchi.   In particular, Ms. Berman will detail the hitherto hidden personality of Juliana Force, who rose from poverty and obscurity to reinvent herself as a flamboyant Village bohemian, and became the Whitney’s first director and a standout in her profession.

Avis Berman is the author of Rebels on Eighth Street: Juliana Force and the Whitney Museum of American Art, as well as many other books, catalogues, reviews and essays on early twentieth-century American art.

To register, please call (212) 475-9585 ext. 35 or email.