Whitney Museum of American Art
945 Madison Avenue at 75th Street
New York, NY 10021
General Information: 1 (800) WHITNEY
www.whitney.org

ARTIST LIST BELOW:

CHRISSIE ILES AND PHILIPPE VERGNE TO CURATE 2006 BIENNIAL

NEW YORK, January 14, 2005 -- The 2006 Whitney Biennial, the nation’s signature survey of contemporary American art, will be organized by Chrissie Iles, curator, Whitney Museum of American Art, and Philippe Vergne, senior curator of visual arts at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and recently been named director of the new Fran�ois Pinault Foundation for Contemporary Art in Paris. Iles was one of the three curators of the 2004 Biennial; this will be Vergne’s first experience as a Biennial curator.

Iles and Vergne will spend the rest of the year seeking out the most significant artists working today. The list of selected artists is announced toward the end of 2005. The seventy-third in the series of Annual and Biennial exhibitions inaugurated in 1932 by Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney, the 2006 Biennial will be on view from March through May 2006.

In naming the curators, Adam D. Weinberg, the Whitney’s Alice Pratt Brown Director, said, “Each Whitney Biennial is an historic event we anticipate greatly, and each is completely different from the past. Chrissie and Philippe are experienced, passionate, and deeply committed. Both are thoroughly familiar with the contemporary American scene, and their partnership will also bring a broad international perspective to the project as well as enormous insight, energy, and flair. It will be a provocative and powerful show of the best new work by emerging and established artists.”