Jack Whitten
The Museum of Modern Art | 11 West 53 Street
Through August 2, 2025
Jack Whitten sits among the highest order in the pantheon of the art gods—at least for now, in the Museum of Modern Art’s top-floor gallery. Ever since the $450 million-dollar expansion completed in 2019, MoMA has felt disorienting, usually crowded, and vague in its too-much-of-a-good-thing dispersion, leading the visitor to feel as if they are stumbling through its unmatched collection. (It’s less than half the size of the Met and somehow more difficult to navigate.) Yet, there are few better art experiences to be had in the world than a great MoMA exhibition in this sixth-floor space, which provides the sprawling museum its reassuring beacon.
With “Jack Whitten: The Messenger,” composed of nearly 200 objects, mostly paintings, MoMA’s curator at large, Michelle Kuo, has organized one of the best in a series of reliably great exhibitions on this upper level. Posthumous career retrospectives don’t get much better.
