Jasper Johns: Mind/Mirror at Whitney Museum of American Art, September 29, 2021 – February 13, 2022 

“Jasper Johns (b. 1930) is arguably the most influential living American artist. Over the past sixty-five years, he has produced a radical and varied body of work marked by constant reinvention. In an unprecedented collaboration, the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Whitney will stage a retrospective of Johns’s career simultaneously across the two museums, featuring paintings, sculptures, drawings, and prints, many shown publicly for the first time. Inspired by the artist’s long-standing fascination with mirroring and doubles, the two halves of the exhibition will act as reflections of one another, spotlighting themes, methods, and images that echo across the two venues. A visit to one museum or the other will provide a vivid chronological survey; a visit to both will offer an innovative and immersive exploration of the many phases, facets, and masterworks of Johns’s still-evolving career.

This exhibition is co-organized by the Whitney Museum of American Art and the Philadelphia Museum of Art. The organizing curators are Carlos Basualdo, Keith L. and Katherine Sachs Senior Curator of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia Museum of Art, and Scott Rothkopf, Senior Deputy Director and Nancy and Steve Crown Family Chief Curator, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, with Sarah B. Vogelman, exhibition assistant, in Philadelphia, and Lauren Young, curatorial assistant, in New York.” — Whitney Museum of American Art

Jasper Johns, Target with Four Faces, 1955. Encaustic and collage on canvas with objects, 29 3/4 × 26 in. (75.6 × 66 cm). The Museum of Modern Art, New York; gift of Mr. and Mrs. Robert C. Scull 8.1958. © 2021 Jasper Johns / Licensed by VAGA at Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY. Photograph by Jamie Stukenberg, Professional Graphics, Rockford, Illinois
Jasper Johns, Three Flags, 1958. Encaustic on canvas (three panels), 30 7/8 × 45 3/4 in. (78.4 × 116.2 cm) overall. Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; purchase, with funds from the Gilman Foundation, Inc., The Lauder Foundation A. Alfred Taubam, Laura-Lee Whittier Woods, Howard Lipman, and Ed Downe in honor of the Museum’s 50th Anniversary 80.32. © 2021 Jasper Johns / Licensed by VAGA at Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY
Jasper Johns, Map, 1961. Oil on canvas, 78 × 123 1/4 in. (198.1 × 313.1 cm). The Museum of Modern Art, New York; gift of Mr. and Mrs. Robert C. Scull 277.1963. © 2021 Jasper Johns / Licensed by VAGA at Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY
Jasper Johns, According to What, 1964. Oil, charcoal, and graphite on canvas with objects (six panels), 88 × 191 3/4 in. (223.5 × 487 cm) overall. The Middleton Family Collection. © 2021 Jasper Johns / Licensed by VAGA at Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY. Philadelphia Museum of Art Photo Studio; Joseph Hu
Jasper Johns, Harlem Light, 1967. Oil and collage on canvas (4 panels), 85 × 172 1/8 in. (215.9 × 437.2 cm) overall. Seattle Art Museum; partial and promised gift of Jon and Mary Shirley, in honor of the 75th Anniversary of the Seattle Art Museum 2002.67 © 2021 Jasper Johns / Licensed by VAGA at Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photograph courtesy the Wildenstein Plattner Institute, New York
Jasper Johns, Savarin, 1982. Monotype, 50 × 38 in. (127 × 96.5 cm). Bill Goldston, James V. Smith, Thomas Cox/ULAE. Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; gift of the American Contemporary Art Foundation, Inc., Leonard A. Lauder, President, 2002.228. Prints published by ULAE © 2021 Jasper Johns and ULAE/VAGA at Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
Jasper Johns, In the Studio, 1982. Encaustic, crayon, and collage on canvas with objects, 72 × 48 in. (182.9 × 121.9 cm). Collection of the artist; on long-term loan to the Philadelphia Museum of Art, 1984. © 2021 Jasper Johns / Licensed by VAGA at Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photograph © The Wildenstein Plattner Institute, New York, 2021
Jasper Johns, Racing Thoughts, 1983. Encaustic and collage on canvas, 48 1/8 × 75 3/8 in. (122.2 × 191.5 cm). Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; purchase, with funds from the Burroughs Wellcome Purchase Fund; Leo Castelli; the Wilfred P. and Rose J. Cohen Purchase Fund; the Julia B. Engel Purchase Fund; the Equitable Life Assurance Society of the United States Purchase Fund; The Sondra and Charles Gilman, Jr. Foundation, Inc.; S. Sidney Kahn; The Lauder Foundation, Leonard and Evelyn Lauder Fund; the Sara Roby Foundation; and the Painting and Sculpture Committee 84.6. © 2021 Jasper Johns / Licensed by VAGA at Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY. Photograph by Jamie Stukenberg, Professional Graphics, Rockford, Illinois
Jasper Johns, Fall, 1986. Encaustic on canvas, 75 × 50 in. (190.5 × 127 cm). Collection of the artist; on long-term loan to Philadelphia Museum of Art. © 2021 Jasper Johns / Licensed by VAGA at Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY
Jasper Johns, Untitled, 1998. Encaustic on canvas with objects, 44 1/8 × 22 1/2 in. (112.1 × 57.2 cm). Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; promised gift of Emily Fisher Landau P.2010.118. © 2021 Jasper Johns / Licensed by VAGA at Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY. Photograph by Jamie Stukenberg, Professional Graphics, Rockford, Illinois
Ugo Mulas, Jasper Johns, 1964. Vintage gelatin silver print, 9 7/8 × 14 1/2 in. (25 × 37 cm). Ugo Mulas Archive, Milan. Photograph © Ugo Mulas Heirs

 Adam D. Weinberg, the Whitney’s Alice Pratt Brown Director, commented, “We are delighted to present this unique retrospective together with the Philadelphia Museum of Art, an important occasion for both museums, which have had connections with the artist going back decades. The Whitney has been collecting and showing Johns since the 1960s and we are thrilled to celebrate his extraordinary career. Enigmatic, poetic, rich, and profoundly influential, Johns’s work is always ripe for reexamination.” 

Images courtesy Whitney Museum of American Art.