The Whitney Announces Winter Education and Public Programs

The Whitney Museum of American Art announced its lineup of free education and public programs through January 2022. A selection of panels, art-making workshops, and art history courses explore the work of Jasper Johns on the occasion of the major retrospective Jasper Johns: Mind Mirror. My Barbarian and Jennifer Packer are also highlighted in programs coinciding with recently opened solo exhibitions by these artists. Celebrating the current collection exhibition Making Knowing: Craft in Art, 1950–2019, artist Marie Watt hosts two Sewing Circles at the Museum in January 2022, inviting teens and the public to join her in making a collaborative work of art.

Among those lending their voices and perspectives to these programs are artists R.H. Quaytman and Marie Watt; author and art historian John G. Hanhardt; film scholar Bruce Jenkins and filmmaker Tom Kalin; poets Rick Barot, Khadijah Queen, Cole Swensen, and Brian Teare; and curators and educators Josh Lubin-Levy, Jane Panetta, Scott Rothkopf, Sarah Vogelman, and Lauren Young. Printmakers from the Robert Blackburn Printmaking Workshop offer guided lessons for families, educators, and the public, allowing participants to create their own images with household materials.

All events are free with advance registration. For Museum hours, event updates, and registration details, please visit whitney.org.

SPECIAL EXHIBITION PROGRAMMING

Jasper Johns: MIND/MIRROR

New Voices: Artists on Jasper Johns
Thursday, November 18, 6 pm
Online, via Zoom
Hosted with the Philadelphia Museum of Art

This panel gathers a range of artists and professionals across visual art, poetry, and dance to discuss Jasper Johns and his indelible mark on their own work. Panelists include artist R.H. Quaytman, poet Brian Teare, and Patricia Lent, Licensing Director for the Merce Cunningham Trust.

The panel is moderated by Sarah Vogelman, Exhibition Assistant for Jasper Johns: Mind/Mirror at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

To register for the event, please visit: https://philamuseum-org.zoom.us/webnar/register/WN_J56jSkNvTc-lmh-3_A_AFQ

Monoprint Workshop with the Robert Blackburn Printmaking Workshop
Friday, December 3 and 10, 3 pm
Online, via Zoom

Held in conjunction with Jasper Johns: Mind/Mirror and inspired by the hundreds of experimental monoprints Johns created throughout his career, this two-part workshop provides a guided printmaking lesson with the Robert Blackburn Printmaking Studio. Participants will discover the printmaking process through the monotype technique, creating their own works with household materials and using different colors to create a multi-layered print.

Each ninety-minute session will be led by printmakers from the Robert Blackburn Printmaking Workshop. Participants will be able to ask questions live through Zoom breakout rooms.

The Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts Robert Blackburn Printmaking Workshop (RBPMW) is a co-operative printmaking workspace that provides professional-quality printmaking facilities to artists and printmakers of every skill level. RBPMW seeks to improve the overall quality of fine art printmaking by providing low-cost, unfettered access to printers, equipment, and education. Throughout the run of Jasper Johns: Mind/Mirror, the Whitney's Education Department is collaborating with RBPW to offer printmaking workshops for families, teens, educators, and the public. 

Mirroring Practice: Poets Respond to Jasper Johns
Thursday, January 20, 2022, 7 pm
Online, via Zoom
Hosted with the Philadelphia Museum of Art

This poetry reading brings together Rick Barot, Khadijah Queen, Cole Swensen, and Brian Teare, poets whose work has long been engaged with painting and the visual arts. Their work has treated painting as subject matter and language as a material whose properties, like paint, need further investigation. Their poems have mirrored painting sometimes through traditional representational means—description, figuration—and at other times through tactical ones—processes of layering, cutting, and scraping. Each poet is writing new work that responds to Jasper Johns as a maker, highlighting that the word poetry at its root—poiein—means "to make."

To register for the event, please visit: https://philamuseum-org.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_6ozPXZpmSSaooMvKUssMWA

Jennifer Packer: The Eye Is Not Satisfied With Seeing

Verbal Description Online: Jennifer Packer: The Eye Is Not Satisfied With Seeing
Friday, November 19, 10 am
Online, via Zoom

Verbal Description Online provides an opportunity for visitors who are blind or have low vision to experience the richness and diversity of twentieth- and twenty-first-century American art through vivid description. Ninety-minute sessions are offered monthly on Friday mornings via Zoom and over the phone. This session will focus on the exhibition Jennifer Packer: The Eye Is Not Satisfied With Seeing. 

Ask A Curator: Jennifer Packer: The Eye Is Not Satisfied With Seeing
Tuesday, December 14, 6 pm
Online, via Zoom

Exhibition co-curator and Director of the Collection Jane Panetta and Curatorial Assistant Ambika Trasi will explore Jennifer Packer's solo Whitney presentation, the artist's first in New York City. Featuring over thirty works from the past decade, The Eye Is Not Satisfied With Seeing is the largest survey of Packer's practice to date. Her intimate renderings of friends, family, and flowers evoke the art historical genres of portraiture and still life while also highlighting the politics of representation. For this event, Panetta and Trasi wll provide an overview of the exhibition and then take questions from the audience.

My Barbarian

My Barbarian: Mega Artist Talk

Wednesday, December 8, 7 pm

Online, via Zoom

On the occasion of the survey exhibition My Barbarian, group members Malik Gaines, Jade Gordon, and Alexandro Segade will share the twenty-year story of their collective practice. From their earliest performances in Los Angeles clubs to their social and political theater productions, the conversation will tell the history of the group's evolution and highlight their multivalent approach to performance. The program also celebrates the publication of the first monograph about My Barbarian, which includes a richly illustrated visual chronology with texts written by the artists.

COLLECTION EXHIBITION PROGRAMMING

Making Knowing: Craft in Art, 1950–2019

Marie Watt Sewing Circle

January 14 and 15, 2022, 11 am–3 pm

Floor Three, Susan and John Hess Family Theater

Celebrating the run of the collection exhibition Making Knowing: Craft in Art, 1950–2019, artist Marie Watt, whose blanket work Skywalker/Skyscraper (Axis Mundi), 2012, is featured in the exhibition, will host two Sewing Circles at the Whitney. For these gatherings, which are integral to Watt's artistic practice, the artist welcomes community members to join her in making a collaborative work of art with a needle and thread. Sewing Circle participants will come together to stitch pre-selected text onto fabric panels with materials provided by the Museum. All sewers will also receive a print from the artist.

The language for the panels will also be provided by members of the community. Inspired by a poem by Joy Harjo (Mvskoke/Creek Nation), the 23rd Poet Laureate of the United States, Watt invites audiences (including those who are not participating in the Sewing Circle) to share something that they want to celebrate through song. These submissions will create the foundation for the panels sewn in the workshops. To submit text post a photo of the handwritten word on Instagram using #whitneysewingcircle or submit the image at the following link by December 15: https://form.asana.com/?k=Pys8MBGBLH4msFWBKcFOwA&d=119436110494676

The Sewing Circle on January 14 is part of the Open Studio For Teens program. The January 15 Sewing Circle is open to all members of the public.

ADDITIONAL EVENTS

Day With(out) Art 2021: ENDURING CARE

Wednesday, December 1, screening 11 am–5 pm

Floor Three, Susan and John Hess Family Theater

For Day With(out) Art 2021, the Whitney is proud to partner with Visual AIDS to present ENDURING CARE, a video program highlighting community care strategies within the ongoing HIV epidemic. The program features newly commissioned work by Katherine Cheairs, Cristóbal Guerra, Danny Kilbride, Abdul-Aliy A. Muhammad and Uriah Bussey, Beto Pérez, Steed Taylor, J Triangular, and the Women's Video Support Project. Centering stories of collective care, mutual aid, and solidarity, these works range from histories of harm reduction and prison activism to visualizations of the long-term effects of HIV medication.

Runtime: 50 minutes. Screenings will start on the hour in the Susan and John Hess Family Theater throughout the day. Access to the screening is free with Museum admission.

Visual AIDS is a New York–based nonprofit that utilizes art to fight AIDS by provoking dialogue, supporting HIV+ artists, and preserving a legacy, because AIDS is not over.

The Films of Andy Warhol Launch

Thursday, December 2, 7 pm

Online, via Zoom

Celebrating the publication of The Films of Andy Warhol Catalogue Raisonné,1963–1965, Volume 2, this conversation centers on Warhol's practice as a filmmaker, exploring the relationship between his films and his work in other media and the importance of his films to 20th-century art. John G. Hanhardt, the general editor of the catalogue raisonné and former curator and head of film and video at the Whitney, will be joined by film scholar Bruce Jenkins and filmmaker Tom Kalin, editors and contributors to The Films of Andy Warhol, to speak about the history of Warhol's engagement with cinema and the paradox of the artist's deeply influential yet largely unknown films.

The Films of Andy Warhol Catalogue Raisonné, 1963–1965 is the second volume of the catalogue raisonné of the artist's films, published by the Whitney and distributed by Yale University Press on October 26, 2021. This new volume complements the first volume of the catalogue raisonné, Andy Warhol Screen Tests: The Films of Andy Warhol Catalogue Raisonné, authored by the film scholar and Warhol authority Callie Angell and published by the Whitney and Abrams in 2006 to wide critical acclaim.

ONGOING PROGRAMS

Open Studio To Go

Saturday, November 6, 13, and 20, 11 am–3 pm

Floor 3, Laurie M. Tisch Education Center

On Saturdays, families with kids of all ages can pick up Art Kits in the Laurie M. Tisch Education Center on the Museum's third floor. Providing tools for exploring the galleries and making artworks, the Art Kits are updated each week with new activities and materials.