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Title:	Jack Whitten: The Messenger
Date:	3/23/2025 - 8/2/2025
Address:	The Museum of Modern Art, 11 W 53rd St, New York, NY 10019 212-708-9400 free - $30
Location:	New York, NY
Hours:	Monday - Sunday: 10:30am – 5:30pm / Friday: 10:30am – 10:30pm
Cost/Cover:	free - $30
Web Page:	https://www.moma.org/calendar/exhibitions/5785
Contact Info:	212-708-9400

Details:

Jack Whitten revolutionized what art can look like. Through his exploration of paint and pigment, and his ingenious application of tools and technologies—from Afro combs to electrostatic printing—Whitten created novel artistic processes. Through his unflinching confrontation with racial prejudice and technological change, he made art matter in a world in turmoil. Spanning nearly six decades, this exhibition is the first full retrospective of Whitten’s innovative practice, featuring more than 175 paintings, sculptures, and works on paper that illuminate his singular vision. Raised in the segregated US South, Whitten made his way to New York in 1960, where he began to introduce art-making techniques that were the first of their kind. In the 1970s, he experimented with pulling layers of acrylic paint across a floor-bound canvas in a sweeping movement, producing a luminous, quasi-photographic blur. In the 1990s, he cut hardened sheets of acrylic paint into thousands of mosaic tiles to create richly textured, kaleidoscopic paintings that suggest pixels or galaxies.