Jack Whitten: The Messenger
Tue, Jun 03
|MoMA
Experience the visionary power of Jack Whitten’s six-decade career in The Messenger at MoMA—a revelatory retrospective of art, activism, and innovation.
Time & Location
Jun 03, 2025, 7:00 AM – Aug 02, 2025, 11:00 PM
MoMA, 11 W 53rd St, New York, NY 10019, USA
About the event
On view through August 2, 2025
The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA)
Visit MoMA.org
“I am a conduit for the spirit,” Jack Whitten once said.Born in segregated Alabama and shaped by the Civil Rights movement, Whitten’s life and art became an ongoing confrontation with racial injustice and technological transformation. Jack Whitten: The Messenger is the first retrospective to span the artist’s full six-decade career, showcasing over 175 paintings, sculptures, and works on paper that trace an extraordinary arc of aesthetic invention.
From his early New York years in the 1960s to his experimental mosaic abstractions and Grecian-inspired sculptural forms, Whitten continually redefined the boundaries of artistic media. His tools? Afro combs, custom squeegees, electrostatic printing, and even hardened sheets of paint cut into luminous tesserae. Whether channeling jazz improvisation or paying tribute to Black historical figures, Whitten approached art as message and medium—abstract, spiritual, and politically alive.
This landmark exhibition invites visitors…