A NEW RETROSPECTIVE at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York presents the first full-scale, comprehensive examination of abstract artist Jack Whitten (1939-2018). The exhibition explores the artist’s singular practice across six decades. More than 175 works are on view in “Jack Whitten: The Messenger”, including paintings, sculptures, and works on paper.
Known for his inventive methods, materials, and techniques, Whitten explored weighty issues, reflecting his experiences growing up during segregation (what he called “American apartheid”) and the Civil Rights Movement.
Born in Bessemer, Ala., Whitten was a pre-med student and Air Force ROTC cadet at Tuskegee Institute before he moved to New York. There he studied art at The Cooper Union and graduated in 1964. He lived and worked in Queens, N.Y., and for nearly five decades spent summers in Crete, Greece.
“Jack Whitten: The Messenger” is presented exclusively at MoMA. A video produced on the occasion of the exhibition sheds light on Whitten’s background and approach to making work.
“When we look at Whitten’s water like flows and forms, there are layers upon layers there, quite literally, and there are histories upon histories there. He transformed righteous anger into a kind of dazzling beauty,” exhibition curator Michelle Kuo said in the video.
Reflections from the artist; Mary Whitten and Mirsini Amidon, his wife and daughter; and MoMA conservators Annie Wilker and Michaell Duffy, are also featured. Whitten’s studio is shown, too, preserved precisely as he left it when he died in 2018:
Produced to accompany Jack Whitten’s new retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York, this video includes reflections from the artist’s family, considers his use of materials and techniques, and sheds light on his experiences growing up in the South during segregation. | Video by MoMA
JACK WHITTEN, Mirsinaki Blue. 1974 (acrylic on canvas, 62 1/8 × 72 1/8 inches / 157.8 × 183.2 cm). | Collection of Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, Cornell University. Gift of Leonard and Ruth Bocour. © 2024 Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, Cornell University
EXPERIMENTING WITH PAINT
MIRSINI AMIDON | Daughter: I’ve always felt that the paintings are alive, the paintings are my siblings and they are definitely alive.…My father was an abstract painter, and what he did was to take slabs of paint and break them down in such a way that they could become pellets of information, and so he is constantly experimenting with paint. What can you do with it? Can you freeze dry acrylic paint? Can you heat it up? Can you smash it with a hammer? That was his joy.
MICHELLE KUO | Chief Curator at Large and Publisher: Whitten shape-shifted throughout his career constantly, and so he’s actually unlike many other artists in the history of post-war and contemporary art because instead of one signature style, he had maybe like 10. At the turn of each decade, he has a breakthrough and he invents something completely new to the history of western art. In the 70s, he created this novel form of blur painting that almost looks like photography, and in the 80s, he actually started creating works that were infusing reliefs and molds. Literally sculptures made out of paint.
JACK WHITTEN, Detail of “Four Wheel Drive,” 1970 (acrylic on canvas, 98 1/4 × 98 1/4 inches / 249.6 × 249.6 cm). | Private collection. © Jack Whitten Estate. Courtesy the Estate and Hauser & Wirth, Photo by Genevieve Hanson
JACK WHITTEN, “Liquid Space I,’ 1976 (acrylic slip on paper, 20 5/8 x 20 5/8 inches / 52.4 x 52.4 cm). | The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Purchased with funds provided by Dian Woodner in honor of The Friends of Education of The Museum of Modern Art. © 2025 The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Photo by Peter Butler
STYLES AND METHODS ALL HIS OWN
ANNA WILKER | Paper Conservator: At first glance, many of Whitten’s works are just so mysterious. It’s really hard to tell what he’s done to make this artwork that you’re looking at. This comes from the fact that he made all of his own art materials, … This is the first time a technical study has ever been done on any of Whitten’s artworks. This is Liquid Space I. The first time I saw this work in person, it sparkled and it glittered in the light, it was textural, there were parts that were clumpy. Then I turned the piece over and I saw all these waves in the sheet, and a light bulb kind of went off in my mind, and I realized that the waves in the back of the sheet line up completely perfectly with the image on the front. At that point, I put it together that there’s no way Whitten could have made this work without having it completely sopping wet, that the image itself came out of water. Something paper does when it gets wet, it swells and it expands, and since the edges were taped down, they were constrained and the paper had nowhere to go. That meant all of these ripples formed in the piece of paper. Whitten made this from white acrylic paint, gesso, pencil, and this amazing material he invented called acrylic slip. It was this beautiful shimmery gray paint like substance. It was totally innovative.
JACK WHITTEN, “Birmingham 1964,” 1964 (aluminum foil, newsprint, stocking and oil on board, 16 5/8 x 16 inches / 42.2 x 40.6 cm). | Collection of Joel Wachs. © Photo by John Berens, Courtesy Jack Whitten Estate and Hauser & Wirth
ART, HISTORY, AND CHANGE
MARY WHITTEN | Wife: He didn’t really talk about the South that much. Jack is one of the few Black artists in our circle who grew, actually grew up there till the age of 17, 18 years old down in Alabama growing up in the Jim Crow South. Very hateful things happen that he saw burning crosses, Ku Klux Klan, people disappearing. …The deep, dark stuff very seldom came out, but it was there. We all knew it was there.
MICHELLE KUO | Chief Curator at Large and Publisher: As much as he paid homage to historical figures and to memory, he found a way forward. Whitten invented his own type of mosaic, marrying a very ancient art with a very futuristic one, which he likened to a arrays of pixels or bits of information or even stars and constellations of galaxies. He posited that art could actually change our perception in some way, and that would help provide a blueprint, if you will, for a future navigation of all of the crises that we’re facing. CT
JACK WHITTEN, “Atopolis: For Édouard Glissant,” 2014 (acrylic on canvas, 8 panels, overall 124 1/2 × 248 1/2 inches /316.2 × 631.2 cm). | The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Acquired through the generosity of Sid R. Bass, Lonti Ebers, Agnes Gund, Henry and Marie-Josée Kravis, Jerry Speyer and Katherine Farley, and Daniel and Brett Sundheim. © 2025 The Museum of Modern Art, New York, Photo by Jonathan Muzikar
“Jack Whitten: The Messenger” is on view at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, N.Y., from March 23-Aug. 2, 2025
IMAGE: Top right, Portrait of Jack Whitten with “Pink Psyche Queen” (1973), circa 1975. | © Jack Whitten Estate. Courtesy Jack Whitten Estate and Hauser & Wirth
BOOKSHELF
“Jack Whitten: The Messenger” documents the Museum of Modern Art exhibition. Contributors to the exhibition catalog include exhibition curator Michelle Kuo, George Lewis, Anna Deavere Smith, artists Glenn Ligon and Julie Mehretu, and Jack Whitten himself, whose writings and essays are featured. Two volumes about Jack Whitten’s work were published in 2018. “Jack Whitten: Odyssey: Sculpture 1963–2017” coincided with the first presentation of Whitten’s sculptural works and “Jack Whitten: Notes from the Woodshed” explores the artist’s studio practice through his notes, interviews and other documentation. “Jack Whitten: Five Decades of Painting” documents the artist’s first-ever career-spanning survey. Finally, “Jack Whitten,” a monograph from Prestel, “conceived with Whitten’s collaboration,” explores the artist’s work, focusing on “the themes of history, politics, science, and music,” in particular.
