New York City: Whitney Museum (July 2016)


My spouse and I visited the Whitney Museum of Art on a Saturday afternoon in mid-July 2016. Since May 2015, the Whitney Museum has been located on Gansevoort Street in the Meatpacking District/Chelsea neighborhood of the city. Prior to that time, for almost 50 years, the Whitney was located on Madison Avenue at 75th Street, the current home of the Met Breuer museum. The Whitney Museum is open Wednesday, Thursday, Sunday, and Monday from 10:30 am to 6:00 pm (closed Tuesdays except during July and August), and Fridays and Saturdays from 10:30 am to 10:00 pm. Admission costs $25 per adult at the door, or you can save a few dollars by booking your admission online ($22 per adult). You can also pay-what-you-wish on Friday evenings from 7:00 pm to closing. You can add an audio guide for an additional $6. Docents offer guided tours periodically throughout the day, and the museum hosts children’s activities and workshops on certain weekends.

The new building designed by Renzo Piano contains 220,000 square feet spread over nine floors. (Piano also designed the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, the Morgan Library addition and the New York Times building in NYC, the Art Institute of Chicago expansion, and the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco.) Unlike the rooms at the old museum, the new galleries are flooded with natural light and feature light-colored pine-plank hardwood floors. Outdoor spaces, including various decks and a public plaza, offer panoramic views of the Hudson River and Lower Manhattan.

Four elevators provide access to the various floors, with two of those elevators also granting access to the lower levels. Three different staircases grant entry to specific levels of the building (one staircase links the third through eighth floors, one links the basement to the fifth floor, and an exterior staircase links the sixth through eighth floors). Almost every floor contains restrooms, and the basement has a coat check. The museum offers two dining options: on the eighth (top) floor, the Studio CafĂ© offers light refreshments during opening hours, with table service at both indoor and outdoor tables as well as an indoor bar. The museum’s fine dining restaurant called Untitled is located on the street level and is open both during and after museum hours. Danny Meyer’s Union Square Hospitality Group operates both restaurants. A bookstore/museum shop is located on the street level, and you can access the shop (as well as Untitled) without purchasing museum admission.

The Whitney’s permanent collection of 20th-century American art consists of major works by Edward Hopper, George Bellows, Georgia O'Keeffe, Roy Lichtenstein, and Jasper Johns. A second-floor space features rotating works from the Whitney’s permanent collection from 1900 to 1950. Because only a select portion of the museum’s permanent collection is on display at any one time, guests can re-visit the museum without seeing the same items twice.

Although contemporary art is not our preferred genre (we are partial to Impressionists), we enjoyed seeing the new Whitney space, particularly the excellent views from the various outside terraces.











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