Join us for the ceremonial unveiling of a plaque honoring Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney and the 150th anniversary of her birth. We will unveil at the site where she had her art studio and founded the first museum devoted to contemporary American art, the Whitney Museum of American Art. We will hear about her remarkable impact in the arts world as an artist, collector, and patron.

This is our 26th plaque unveiling. Our plaque program has honored and marked the homes of local figures from Jane Jacobs to James Baldwin; Allen Ginsberg to Charles Mingus; Frances Perkins to Frank Stella; and Martha Graham to Lorraine Hansberry, as well as historically significant sites such as the former NAACP headquarters, the Fillmore East, and Julius’ Bar.

You can learn more about our plaque program and explore the other plaques here and here.

Participants:

Kaitlin McDonough is the Dean of the New York Studio School, where she has been on faculty since 2014. Her work has been exhibited throughout Italy, the United States, Serbia, and Turkey. Kaitlin is the recipient of a Hohenberg Travel award and has participated in residencies at the Vermont Studio Center and Göz Göze, Büyükada, Turkey. 

Scott Rothkopf is the Alice Pratt Brown Director of the Whitney Museum as well as a former deputy director and chief curator at the institution. He has curated over a dozen exhibitions at the Whitney. Scott has also published extensively on the work of contemporary artists and served as a guest critic, lecturer, and panelist at numerous institutions such as the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, the National Gallery of Canada, and the Museum of Modern Art, New York.