Why You Should Visit Whitney Museum with Your College Kids in 2023/2024

Traveling to New York City? Tell your kids to look up from their mobile devices and join you on an art journey at Whitney Museum of American Art. This stunning museum, located close to the High Line and Chelsea Market, is home to an impressive permanent collection of works from contemporary artists and American masters including Edward Hopper, Jacob Lawrence and Georgia O’Keeffe.

Here’s what’s on:

Ruth Asawa Through Line (through Jan. 15, 2024)

The often-ethereal works of Ruth Asawa (1926–2013) are sometimes overshadowed by her notable sculptures, making this exhibition especially meaningful. Asawa’s drawings are the focus and showcase her continued fascination with different materials and surfaces, as well as the use of line and space. Asawa was influenced by other artists who served as inspiration to her during her family’s forced internment in 1942 as the U.S. government enacted isolation policies directed at Japanese Americans. It was Asawa’s conviction that art could change the world. She famously said, “Art is not a series of techniques, but an approach to learning, to questioning, and to sharing.”

Fragments of a Faith Forgotten: The Art of Harry Smith (through Jan. 28, 2024)

A range of the life works of nonconformist, painter, filmmaker and folklorist Harry Smith (1923–1991) reveal the various stages of the artist’s transformative experiences — from his Depression-era childhood and introduction to ecstatic religious philosophies and Native American ceremonies to the influences of peyote and intellectualism in Berkeley, California, and forays into experimental cinema, all leading to his role in New York City’s avant-garde fringe community and his embrace of emerging technologies.

Inheritance (through February 2024)

This exhibition explores legacy from the perspective of family, history and aesthetics, as well as the many meanings of the word “inheritance” itself. The exhibition includes new acquisitions and rarely viewed works drawn from the museum’s own collection. Among the 43 artists included in this exhibit are Diedrick Brackens, Todd Gray, Maggie Lee, Kambui Olujimi, Faith Ringgold, Kara Walker, Cameron Rowland and Lyndon Chase.