7. The Whitney Museum’s Fourth Location Is Here
You might remember the Whitney’s former location in the Marcel Breuer building on Madison Avenue, but did you know that the Renzo Piano-designed building at the southern end of the High Line is actually the Whitney’s fourth home?
The Whitney Museum of American Art wouldn’t even exist if the Met had accepted Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney’s donation in 1929. By then, she had amassed a collection of more than 500 works of art by American artists, many of whom were disregarded by traditional institutions. An artist herself and scion of the powerful Vanderbilt family, Gertrude established her own museum focused exclusively on American artists, primarily living ones, which opened in 1931 on West 8th Street. In 1954 the museum moved to an expanded site near MoMA, before moving again in 1963 to the Breuer building. It opened in its current location at 99 Gansevoort Street in 2015.
