Every other March, work by America’s best and brightest artists is agglomerated at the Whitney Museum of American Art. Luddites ought to know that the Whitney Biennial is, as Alex Greenberger of ArtNews wrote in 2024, “the most important art exhibition in the US,” and that it unfailingly generates a tremendous amount of controversy.
Its parameters are somewhat straightforward: two — or, infrequently, three — curators, one of whom is ordinarily a member of the Whitney curatorial staff, join forces to select a survey of work by various artists which speaks in some way to the tenor of the nation’s current cultural and sociopolitical moments. Contemporary iterations of the Biennial involve three related components: an exhibition (which general audiences might be most familiar with), film programming and performances.
The precursor to the Biennial, the Whitney Annual, was established in 1932, and its aims were similar to those of the modern version: finding the nation’s top artists and presenting their most exciting and timely work in a collective dialogue. Today, most of its participating artists live and practice in the United States, though recently the Whitney has embraced a flexible policy which permits the involvement of artists who perhaps formerly lived in the United States, whose work explores their tenuous relationship to the U.S., or whose work makes reference to the “broad reach of U.S. power,” to borrow the Museum’s phrasing.
Rarely does the general public agree unanimously on the answer to queries about what it means to be an American or how to best express the complexities latent in bearing that descriptor — not this year, not any year — hence the controversy.
While the Biennial is famed for putting emerging artists on the map, some of whom are now household names like Georgia O’Keeffe and Jeff Koons, it welcomes established artists, artist collectives and even deceased artists into the fold. Similarly, the exhibition does not discriminate on the basis of material; the Biennial has a reputation for serving as the locus of technical experimentation. Both the 2024 and 2026 iterations, with their heavy digital art, artificial intelligence and time-based media bents, evidence that fact.
So why does the Biennial matter? And why is it so unfailingly controversial? For one, summing up the state of things in America is a tall order, and such is especially true when many consider the world to be falling apart in real time. Curators are tasked with the challenge of creating context for a vast body of work, while also respecting the complexity and dynamism of the current moment. They must frame, not flatten. These curatorial teams are dualistic in nature; their individual visions and proclivities must find middle ground in the final exhibition. Rarely does the general public agree unanimously on the answer to queries about what it means to be an American or how to best express the complexities latent in bearing that descriptor — not this year, not any year — hence the controversy.
With this background in mind, attention may now be turned to the Whitney Biennial 2026. Judging by reviews, it has delighted, disappointed and perturbed critics in equal parts. Hakim Bishara, of Hyperallergic, described its target audience as “faint-hearted,” leveling an acerbic critique: “I got the sense that this biennial is hiding from the world today instead of reflecting on it.”
Still, William Van Meter of major arts publication ArtNet was “holding back tears” before a number of the works. Ben Davis, also of ArtNet, published a second set of conclusions following his initial review, acknowledging that the show is “a slow burn, in some ways trying not to be easily definable,” and that its truths and undercurrents revealed themselves to him only over time. What emerges, when we consider these reviews as a collective, is the fact that this Biennial swaps spectacle for intimacy. It largely speaks at the personal level, and the extent to which this approach resonates with critics evidently varies on a case-by-case basis.
This year, one might locate in the exhibition a commitment to emulating the fragmentation, dissonance and incoherence which characterize the temperature of contemporary life. In the Biennial galleries, one finds oscillations between joy and despair, conservation and erosion, fragmentation and collectivity.
The Biennial is broad in scope, to be sure, but when is it not? This year, one might locate in the exhibition a commitment to emulating the fragmentation, dissonance and incoherence which characterize the temperature of contemporary life. In the Biennial galleries, one finds oscillations between joy and despair, conservation and erosion, fragmentation and collectivity. Emotional and sensorial experiences are privileged. (See Emilie Louise Gossiaux’s intimate drawings, depicting the artist themself flanked by their late guide-dog, or Nour Barak’s “Recto Verso,” the making of which involved the artist’s casting of her own pregnant body in resin.) Sculpture butts up against painting, sound bleeds into niches containing small-format textile works and media which escape easy categorization — like coding or digital art — attract crowds.
Taken individually, most pieces resonated, and the potentialities of the digital and video mediums were markedly visible. Visitors flocked to Michelle Lopez’s “Pandemonium” (2025), an installation featuring animated imagery of human-made disasters and real footage of newspaper clippings swirling as if in a tornado. It played on a circular, overhead screen that emulated the planetarium where it was originally shown. Aside from the obvious allusion to the generally disastrous nature of our times, “Pandemonium” speaks to the misinformation, media overload and environmental collapse with which we reckon today.
Other installations took a more humorous tack: “20-minute workout video [WIP]” (2023–25), a satirical workout video filmed on the Kealakekua Bay in Hawaii, functions as political and social commentary while sporting the aesthetics of early 2000s kitsch. “Camoflux Incendio Igapó,” by Leo Castañeda, took the shape of an immersive video game, whose fantastical landscapes were created in collaboration with the artist’s grandmother, the painter Maria Thereza Negreiros. Even better, it is a work which places at its center technology’s capacities to resolve environmental challenges.
Sure, one might take issue with this Biennial’s throughline — a rejection of a throughline — or otherwise critique its tepidness, its unwillingness to touch the violence of the moment. But one of the Biennial’s chief merits is the way in which it can thrust great artwork into the spotlight. One such example, “Until we became fire and fire became us” (2023), an evocative video and sound installation by the artist duo Basel Abbas and Ruanne Abou-Rahme, which engages with both the fragmentation of Palestinian communities and the love and cooperative effort through which they persist, heal and regenerate.
Drawing on contemporary video footage, harmonic arrangements of spoken word and images of plants characterized by their tremendous resilience, this work is nothing less than a treat to encounter. The seas of public opinion and critical reception are turbulent, particularly with respect to the Whitney Biennial. If one is willing to weather them, they might find some exemplary art within the tumult.
The Whitney Biennial 2026 is on view until Aug. 23.
