“Shifting Landscapes at the Whitney Museum of American Art, explores how evolving political, ecological, and social issues motivate artists and their representations of the world around them. While the traditional art historical landscape genre has long been associated with picturesque vistas and documentary accounts of place, artworks drawn from the Whitney’s collection for this exhibition, most on view at the Museum for the first time, suggest a more expansive interpretation.

Shifting Landscapes features 120 works by more than 80 artists, including Firelei Báez, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Jane Dickson, Teresita Fernández, Gordon Matta-Clark, and Purvis Young, spanning the 1960s to the present. Photographs, installations, films, videos, sculptures, paintings, drawings, prints, and digital artworks depict the effects of industrialization on the environment, grapple with the impact of geopolitical borders, and give shape to imagined spaces as a way of destabilizing the concept of a “natural” world. Organized in thematic sections, these works bring the many meanings embedded in land and place into focus, foregrounding how we shape and are shaped by the spaces around us.” — Whitney Museum of American Art

“Shifting Landscapes reflects the Whitney’s ongoing commitment to telling diverse stories in American art,” said Jennie Goldstein, Jennifer Rubio Associate Curator of the Collection; Marcela Guerrero, DeMartini Family Curator; and Roxanne Smith, Senior Curatorial Assistant at the Whitney. “Landscape—in its formal, social, and political implications—feels like a particularly dynamic and urgent subject today, and we are excited that over half of the works in this exhibition are new to the collection and on view at the Museum for the first time.”

Shifting Landscapes is on view through January 2026 at the Whitney Museum of American Art. The exhibition is organized by Jennie Goldstein, Jennifer Rubio Associate Curator of the Collection; Marcela Guerrero, DeMartini Family Curator; Roxanne Smith, Senior Curatorial Assistant; with Angelica Arbelaez, Rubio Butterfield Family Fellow; with thanks to Araceli Bremauntz-Enriquez and J. English Cook for research support.

Title image: Jane Dickson, Heading in – Lincoln Tunnel 3, 2003. Oil on Astroturf, 33 × 46 × 2 3/8in. (83.8 × 116.8 × 6 cm). Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; gift of Eve Ahearn and Joseph Ahearn 2017.275. © Jane Dickson

Images courtesy Whitney Museum of American Art.