Whitney 2000 Biennial Exhibition - March 23-June 4, 2000

[Claudia Westermann]

http://www.whitney.org/exhibition/2kb/biennial.html

2000 Biennial Exhibition
March 23-June 4, 2000

The artists in the "2000 Biennial," the seventieth in the Whitney Museum's 
signature series, were selected after a nationwide search. The more than 
two hundred works are in a variety of media, from painting, sculpture, and 
installation art to film and video selections and Internet art. The 
exhibition opens on March 23, 2000, and runs in its entirety through June 
4, 2000.

For the first time in Biennial history, the exhibition was curated by a 
group of outside experts working across the country, under the guidance of 
Whitney Museum director Maxwell L. Anderson. In addition to being one of 
the largest Biennial exhibitions to date, it is also one of the Whitney 
Museum's most international, with twenty-one artists born outside the 
United States.

Internet art makes its debut at the Whitney Museum in the "2000 Biennial." 
The nine sites in the Biennial represent a broad range of approaches to 
Internet art, an aesthetic diversity that mirrors the vitality and 
versatility of the medium. The sites range from those that consist almost 
exclusively of text to others that are collages of images and sound.
The Internet Art Gallery within the exhibition allows visitors to explore 
the websites in a large projection format. The sites can also be viewed on 
a bank of computers located in the Robert J. Hurst Family Gallery and 
accessed through the Internet Art page.

The cinematic program, historically one of the strongest sections of the 
Biennial since its inception in the late 1970s, continues to offer evidence 
of the central position of film and video in the contemporary art world. 
The program for the "2000 Biennial" includes works created in the last 
three years by twenty-seven artists. They provide a multifaceted portrait 
of contemporary America and popular culture from the 1950s to the present 
day. The screening schedule is loosely arranged by themes, and each work is 
screened once a week in the Whitney Museum's Kaufman Astoria Studios Film & 
Video Gallery.

The Biennial Voices audio guide, a first for a Whitney Biennial, provides 
an insider's view of the exhibition. Recorded interviews with the artists, 
artist statements, and even original recordings offer listeners an intimate 
connection to the creative process of contemporary art. Biennial Voices was 
produced by Antenna Audio and uses new random-access MP3 digital hand-held 
players.