“This fall, the Whitney Museum of American Art presents Sixties Surreal, a sweeping, ambitious, revisionist look at American art from 1958 to 1972 through the lens of the ‘surreal,’ both inherited and reinvented. Opening on September 24, the exhibition features the work of 111 artists who embraced the psychosexual, fantastical, and revolutionary energy of an era shaped by civil unrest, cultural upheaval, and boundless experimentation. 

Rather than adhering to familiar movements of the 1960s like Pop Art, Conceptualism, or Minimalism, Sixties Surreal uncovers alternate histories and recontextualizes some of the decade’s best-known figures alongside those only recently rediscovered. The exhibition considers how artists turned to Surrealism, not as a European import, but as a way to navigate the strange, turbulent realities of American life. Featuring iconic works by Diane Arbus, Yayoi Kusama, Romare Bearden, Judy Chicago, Nancy Grossman, Christina Ramberg, David Hammons, Louise Bourgeois, Jasper Johns, Fritz Scholder, Peter Saul, Marisol, Robert Crumb, Faith Ringgold, H.C. Westermann, Jack Whitten, and many others, the exhibition brings new visibility to a generation of artists who challenged mainstream narratives in pursuit of radical freedom.” — Whitney Museum of American Art

“Sixties Surreal has been nearly three decades in the making, dating to my time as a Whitney intern and subsequent college thesis. Through intense collaboration with curatorial colleagues Dan Nadel, Laura Phipps, and Elisabeth Sussman, the project has grown into a sweeping reexamination of a turbulent and transformative chapter in American life and art,” said Scott Rothkopf, the Alice Pratt Brown Director of the Whitney. “Sixties Surreal reveals how artists across the country embraced and reinvented surreal tendencies to challenge conventions and mirror the strangeness of a time marked by radical political, social, and cultural change. By bringing their visionary contributions into fuller view, this exhibition helps to reshape how we understand the art and spirit of the 1960s, as well as our own roiling moment.” 

Sixties Surreal is organized by Dan Nadel, Steven and Ann Ames Curator of Drawings and Prints; Laura Phipps, Associate Curator; Scott Rothkopf, Alice Pratt Brown Director; and Elisabeth Sussman, Curator; with Kelly Long, Senior Curatorial Assistant, and Rowan Diaz-Toth, Curatorial Project Assistant, at the Whitney Museum of American Art.

Title image: Linda Lomahaftewa, Untitled Woman’s Faces, 1960s. Oil on canvas, 36 × 48 in. (91.4 × 121.9 cm). Heard Museum, Phoenix; Gift of the artist. © Linda Lomahaftewa.

Images courtesy Whitney Museum of American Art.