Whitney Museum Library
Whitney Museum Library Collections
Whitney Studio Club and Galleries, 1907-1930
The origins of the Whitney Museum of American Art grew out of sculptor Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney's advocacy of living American artists. At the beginning of the twentieth century when artists with new ideas found it nearly impossible to exhibit their art in the United States, Mrs. Whitney began purchasing and showing their work in her former studio on Eighth Street in New York. The records from the Whitney Studio and later the Whitney Galleries reside in the archives of the Whitney Museum of American Art Library. These early records shed light on identifying the artists of that period who represented the changing taste of the art buying and viewing public. The digital collection consists of checklists, photographs, correspondence and ephemera from the exhibitions Ms. Whitney held in the three decades prior to the founding of the Whitney. This project was funded by the Leon Levy Foundation, 2010.
Artists’ Correspondence and Ephemera
Made possible with generous support from the Leon Levy Foundation, the Whitney Artists’ Correspondence and Ephemera project brings focus to a specific selection of extraordinary material found in the Whitney’s Library and Archival collections.These letters, notes, personalized announcements and invitations represent a view of the thoughts and conversations between Museum staff and the artists they represented. Access to this material is an important contribution to the history of twentieth-century American art and the changing tastes of the viewing public and art market. Currently, this collection encompasses correspondence and various pieces of ephemera highlighting more than 180 artists. To begin, one can select a work on display, click browse below, or use the search field above to discover items by an individual artist. What follows is a small selection of artists in the Whitney collection.