All posts tagged: Whitney

Whitney Gala Honors Julie Mehretu, Benefactor of “Free Under 25”

Whitney Gala Honors Julie Mehretu, Benefactor of “Free Under 25”

Published by Jenni Sidey

Last night, the Whitney Museum of American Art hosted its annual gala, honoring artist Julie Mehretu—who in 2024 donated $2.25 million to the museum to ensure that visitors aged 25 and younger can visit the museum for free—alongside Whitney Board Chair Fern Kaye Tessler, and former Whitney Museum director Adam D. Weinberg. Born in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, in 1970, Mehretu’s painting, drawing, and printmaking practice examines the nature of contemporary existence through the relationships between geometric abstraction, figuration, and scale. She rose to acclaim in the late 1990s and early 2000s with spare paintings of fragmented shapes featuring architectural images of buildings or plans. But, as seen in her mid-career survey at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in 2019, and later as the exhibition traveled to the Whitney Museum in 2021, her work came to grapple with legacies of displacement, protest, capitalism, and climate change. Related Articles Introducing Mehretu, Scott Rothkopf, the Alice Pratt Brown Director of the Whitney Museum of American Art, recalled how the artist pulled him aside soon after he …

Whitney Leavitt announces Secret Lives of Mormon Wives exit amid Taylor Frankie Paul drama

Whitney Leavitt announces Secret Lives of Mormon Wives exit amid Taylor Frankie Paul drama

Published by Daniella Wilson

Get the latest entertainment news, reviews and star-studded interviews with our Independent Culture email Get the latest entertainment news with our free Culture newsletter Get the latest entertainment news with our free Culture newsletter Whitney Leavitt is leaving The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives, she announced during her final performance in Chicago on Broadway Sunday. The Hulu reality series is currently embroiled in drama amid an alleged domestic violence incident involving stars Taylor Frankie Paul and her ex, Dakota Mortensen. In video footage obtained by TMZ, Leavitt was shown on stage reading a note announcing her departure from the show. Her representatives have since confirmed her exit to multiple outlets. Since starring SLOMW, which follows a group of Mormon momfluencers caught in the midst of a swinging sex scandal, Leavitt has gone on to compete on Dancing With The Stars — finishing as a semi-finalist last year — before landing her Broadway debut as Roxie Hart in Chicago. “I’ve always loved the entertainment industry,” Leavitt, 32, said in an interview with running influencer Kate Mackz …

Whitney Leavitt Leaving ‘The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives’ Cast

Whitney Leavitt Leaving ‘The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives’ Cast

Published by Daniella Wilson

Whitney Leavitt is saying goodbye to The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives. The reality star turned Broadway darling announced that she is departing the Hulu series during her final performance in Chicago on Sunday. The Hollywood Reporter further confirmed that she is exiting the show’s cast. Leavitt has been a full-time cast member on the Emmy-nominated reality series since its debut in September 2024. After an impressive turn on Dancing With the Stars‘ 34th season, she joined Chicago to star as Roxie Hart and is set to make her feature debut in a holiday rom-com for Ninth House Productions that she’s also executive producing later this year. During her starring turn in Chicago, the musical earned its highest recorded total. After extending her Broadway stay, her DWTS professional partner Mark Ballas also joined her for a number of shows; her final performance was on Sunday. Leavitt’s departure arrives amid a hectic time for Mormon Wives. On April 21, THR confirmed that production on the series would resume after a pause initiated by an internal investigation surrounding Taylor Frankie …

Mark Ballas on his controversial final freestyle with Whitney Leavitt: ‘It had nothing to do with DWTS’

Mark Ballas on his controversial final freestyle with Whitney Leavitt: ‘It had nothing to do with DWTS’

Published by Daniella Wilson

Get the latest entertainment news, reviews and star-studded interviews with our Independent Culture email Get the latest entertainment news with our free Culture newsletter Get the latest entertainment news with our free Culture newsletter Mark Ballas has returned to Broadway after a celebrated season on Dancing With the Stars — even if it didn’t turn out as many had hoped. Ballas, 39, the son of head Strictly Come Dancing judge Shirley Ballas, is a three-time Mirrorball Trophy winner; his most recent victory came with partner Charli D’Amelio in 2022, ending a 13-year draught that saw him take multiple breaks from the competition series. After his last win, he announced his retirement from the show, citing the toll it took on his body. But he returned for season 34 in 2025 with a vengeance, partnering with The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives star Whitney Leavitt to deliver some of the most talked-about routines of the season. Ballas is now starring on Broadway in Chicago, playing Billy Flynn opposite Leavitt as Roxie Hart in a creative partnership …

Christie’s to Offer M. Renoir Painting Owned by Whitney Family

Christie’s to Offer $35 M. Renoir Painting Owned by Whitney Family

Published by Jenni Sidey

For the first time in 97 years, Pierre-Auguste Renoir‘s La femme aux lilas (Portrait de Nini Lopez) will hit the auction block, with an estimate of $25 million to $35 million. Set for Christie’s 20th Century Evening Sale on May 18, the 1876–77 painting depicts Nini Lopez, a young Parisian actress, as a golden-haired woman with milky-pale skin and ruddy cheeks gazing into the distance, as she clasps a bouquet of white and pink flowers. The painting has a unique provenance: since 1929, it has been owned by the Whitney Payson family, a historic American family that Max Carter, Christie’s global chairman of 20th- and 21st-century art, described to the New York Post as “one of the greatest, if not the greatest, American collecting family over the 20th century.” Related Articles The painting was purchased for $100,000 in 1929 by Joan Whitney Payson and her husband, Charles Payson. The work was one of the first pieces Whitney Payson bought, as she went on to build one of the most storied collections of Impressionist and Post-Impressionist …

Frieze New York to Include Whitney Biennial Commission

Frieze New York to Include Whitney Biennial Commission

Published by José Betancourt

In just over a month, Frieze New York will open its 2026 edition, which will include several institutional collaborations and a new acquisition fund. Scheduled to run May 13­–17 at the Shed with more than 65 exhibitors, Frieze New York will partner will the Whitney Museum, the Dia Art Foundation, and the Counterpublic triennial, to present a suite of performances and installations both in and out of the fair. The most high-profile of these is Frieze’s collaboration with this year’s Whitney Biennial. At the fair, artist Jonathan González will present Body Configurations (2023­–25), a photographic installation of six C-prints commissioned for the Biennial that will be displayed on the sixth floor of the Shed. Related Articles During the fair’s run, from May 15–17, González will also realize the durational performance magic hour–golden time (2026), which will be staged on some of the Whitney’s exterior terraces, including ones not accessible to the public, as well as the High Line. “An important and compelling young voice in contemporary performance, Jonathan González creates durational works that often engage …

Precious Okoyomon’s Whitney Biennial Installation Is a True Shocker

Precious Okoyomon’s Whitney Biennial Installation Is a True Shocker

Published by José Betancourt

Earlier this month, the Whitney Biennial went on view to the usual amount of fanfare—but one work was notably missing from the show. That work, a room-filling installation by Precious Okoyomon featuring stuffed animals and racist dolls suspended from the ceiling by nooses, was initially meant to appear in the lobby. But shortly before the exhibition opened to the press, the artist and the show’s curators pulled the plug on that plan. The issue, Okoyomon told ARTnews this week, was not the piece’s disturbing subject matter but a more practical problem: they felt they needed more space to realize such an ambitious project. “It didn’t work,” they said of the initial lobby idea. The dolls and animals “needed to be lower. You have to engage with them in a place where you can look at them and be with them.” Related Articles We met on the Whitney Museum’s the eighth floor, where their installation, titled Everything wants to kill you and you should be afraid (2026), finally went on view Wednesday. Cupping their poodle, Gravity, …

Shrine Sculptor in Whitney Biennial Dies

Shrine Sculptor in Whitney Biennial Dies

Published by Jenni Sidey

Agosto Machado, an artist and activist associated with the Downtown New York art scene whose altar sculptures currently appear in the Whitney Biennial, died on Saturday following a brief illness. In keeping with his own wishes, his gallery, the New York–based Gordon Robichaux, did not announce Machado’s age in the obituary it sent out on Sunday. Speaking of his decision never to publicly share his birth year last year, Machado said, “A lady never tells.” Within the art world, Machado is now recognized as an artist, though he has also been described variously as an archivist and an activist. In interviews, he opted for a different descriptor: “pre-Stonewall street queen.” Related Articles An active participant in the Stonewall uprising of 1969 and the Gay Liberation Movement of the 1970s that followed, Machado was part of a circle that included activists such as Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera; artists such as Peter Hujar, Thomas Lanigan-Schmidt, Jack Smith, and Andy Warhol; and multi-hyphenates such as Candy Darling, Mario Montez, and Stephen Varble. Through his performances at …

Whitney Biennial Artists Explore Boundaries Between Human and Machine

Whitney Biennial Artists Explore Boundaries Between Human and Machine

Published by Jenni Sidey

As I stood in the Whitney Museum’s sixth-floor gallery for the opening of this year’s Biennial, I found the eye of a surveillance camera, iridescent and round as a soap bubble, staring back at me. It was implanted in a rectangular body the color of aging plastic, decades-old desktop computers, and exposed bone. There was also a small embedded LED screen marking hours, months, days, and years, but since what was not clear. I was about to walk away, confused, when the voice of an elderly woman echoed out, full of warmth and experience. “It was a combination of too little sleep, too many chores, and a teeny tiny toddler,” she said cheerily. “Not to mention the supermoon!” I laughed, first in surprise, a wave of affection bubbling up that was quickly quashed by wariness. Related Articles The work, Estate (July 10, 2022), by Cooper Jacoby, surfaces an emergent genre of horror seeping through the mass consciousness: that of measurement and quantification. Jacoby made the work by scraping text from deceased creatives’ social media and …

Whitney Leavitt on SLOMW Potential Exit, Broadway, DWTS, Acting

Whitney Leavitt on SLOMW Potential Exit, Broadway, DWTS, Acting

Published by Daniella Wilson

Whitney Leavitt comes from the reality television world, but she’s making sure that won’t be what she’s remembered for.  Since The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives hit Hulu in September 2024, the show’s cast has been catapulted into swift stardom. Most of those opportunities have orbited the reality TV space, with Leavitt herself competing on ABC’s buzziest Dancing With the Stars installment last year.  And then, following quite the impressive run on the competitive dance series, Leavitt landed the leading role in Chicago on Broadway. Later this year, she’ll also make her feature film debut in a holiday rom-com for Ninth House Productions that she’s also executive producing. All the while, she’s been starring in Mormon Wives and filming for future unreleased seasons. But Leavitt tells The Hollywood Reporter she’s ready to take on new challenges that may lead her away from the Hulu series.  “I wouldn’t be where I am without [The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives,]” Leavitt says, continuing, “But it feels like it’s time to challenge myself in other ways and fulfill …