With the 2024 Whitney Biennial drawing to a close, the museum has announced its curators for the 2026 edition: Marcela Guerrero and Drew Sawyer will co-direct the next Whitney Biennial.
Marcela Guerrero is the first curator at the Whitney focused on Latinx artists and has worked at the museum for seven years, currently serving as DeMartini Family Curator. Guerrero has curated landmark exhibitions at the museum focusing on work by Latinx and Caribbean artists. Most recently, in 2022, she was behind the thought-provoking “No existe un mundo poshuracán: Puerto Rican Art in the Wake of Hurricane Maria,” which significantly explored the dramatic consequences of the devastating hurricane in Puerto Rican society and how these were confronted and elaborated on in Puerto Rican contemporary art. The survey was also one of the first extensive shows in the U.S. to provide an overview of the contemporary art scene in Puerto Rico and its diaspora while also analyzing the relations and tensions in what has long remained an “unincorporated territory” of the United States (a modern euphemism for a colony).
Additionally, Guerrero co-curated the solo exhibition of paintings by the young, talented, Colombian-born Ilana Savdie in 2023, and she was part of the curatorial team that organized another critical survey in 2020, this time on the relations between Mexican muralists and American art: “Vida Americana: Mexican Muralists Remake American Art, 1925–1945.”
In addition to her focus on Latinx works, Guerrero has also engaged with Indigenous artists from the region, curating in 2018 the show “Pacha, Llaqta, Wasichay: Indigenous Space, Modern Architecture,” which explored the intersections of Indigenous architecture and contemporary art through the Indigenous concepts of space and place.
Drew Sawyer’s focus is photography. He joined the Whitney Museum just last year, in July of 2023, as the Sondra Gilman Curator of Photography. He has overseen the museum’s photography collection from 1900 to the present while also leading its photography acquisition committee. As an accomplished curator and art historian, Sawyer’s research throughout his career has developed a focus on photography of the 1930s and 1970s, as well as queer art histories and contemporary practices in the United States.
Sawyer’s first curated show at the Whitney is opening at the end of August and will showcase a selection of new black-and-white photographs, films and sculptural works by Mark Armijo McKnight from his ongoing body of work, “Decreation.” The show marks the artist’s first solo museum presentation. Previously, Sawyer served as the Phillip and Edith Leonian Curator at the Brooklyn Museum, where, among other accomplishments, he organized the first in-depth exploration of the intersection of zines and contemporary art practices in North America, “Copy Machine Manifestos: Artists Who Make Zines.”
“In their years of experience at the Whitney and other prominent institutions, Marcela and Drew have established themselves as leading curatorial voices in the field, innovative and rigorous exhibition makers, and dedicated collaborators with artists,” Kim Conaty, the Nancy and Steve Crown Family Chief Curator at the Whitney, said in a statement. “Each is a renowned scholar who possesses the rare ability to bridge past and future in their work by bringing great curiosity, care, and imagination to the space of artistic practice today. We can’t wait to see what they create together.”
While the Whitney Biennial always aims to provide a rich, multicultural and multimedia overview of the complexities of American art and society, given the diverse backgrounds of the two nominated curators, we can assume that the next edition might give more space to Latinx and Caribbean artists living and working in the United States and will likely feature more photography and documentary-related practices. The selected artists are usually announced at the start of the biennial year.
Meanwhile, the 2024 edition of the Whitney Biennial, “Even Better Than the Real Thing” (curated by Meg Onli and Chrissie Iles) is on view through August 11.