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Biennials are inherently flawed. No matter how sweeping or ambitious they are, there is, always, bound to be an omission of artists, ideas, or a combination thereof. The cause stems from myriad sources: personal biases, a deference toward what’s “hot” right now in the market, and institutional politics that limit how loud artists’ voices are allowed to be. However, even with their faults and their evasive, non-theme themes (which feel, nowadays, to be obfuscated even further with a smokescreen of artspeak), biennials serve as important tastemakers for both art insiders and outsiders. So, with this in mind, I’ll ask: What does it mean to have no Texas representation in this year’s Whitney Biennial?
The show, as it’s organized by the most important museum of American art in the world, is widely seen as a bellwether of contemporary art. An ARTnews article written in advance of this year’s biennial by the publication’s Senior Editor, Alex Greenberger, compares the show to the Venice Biennale and Documenta, but says that the exhibition “has a stated focus, in that each edition is intended to provide a wide-ranging picture of the American art scene during its specific moment.”
This year the Biennial is in its 81st edition. In a Whitney Museum press release, Chrissie Iles and Meg Onli, the show’s curators, said of their approach to organizing it, “Artists are continuing to grapple with history and identity; we have made an exhibition that unfolds as a set of relations, exploring the challenges of coming together in a fractured moment.” Another press release notes that the show “focuses on notions of ‘the real,’” and also mentions themes of AI, transphobia, attacks on gender-affirming care, and the overturning of Roe v. Wade, concluding that “society is at a critical inflection point.”
The breadth of the Biennial feels purposeful: while of course some of the show’s 69 artists (and two collectives) requisitely hail from New York City and Brooklyn (18) and another 11 are from Los Angeles, the Biennial also features artists living and working in Portland, OR, Norfolk, VA, Galisteo, NM, Savannah, GA, Columbus, OH, and beyond. Only one artist, Charisse Pearlina Weston, was born in Texas. None of the included artists are based in Texas.
Although I haven’t seen this year’s exhibition, which opened last week, I have read the lukewarm reception to it in America’s (and the art world’s) premiere publications. (Being one of the highest profile shows in the country means that it is, usually, also the most written about). The reviews are unsurprising; organizing a show like this is both a fool’s errand and a thankless task. And while I’m not naive enough to think that including one or many Texas-based artists would have changed the tide of the exhibition or rendered it suddenly stunning, I am shocked that a show with the above thematic focuses and goals could omit every artist working in a state in which these issues are dead center.
In the same way the Biennial is a gauge for our current American moment, Texas is the future of our country. The state’s population growth between 2010 and 2020 was 95% people of color; the 2024 Whitney Biennial includes few to no straight White men, instead platforming women, queer folks, and artists of color. Texas and its long-lasting conservative political moment is a hotbed for any and all social issues (many of which are addressed in biennials like the Whitney’s). At the same time, Texas’ politicians and citizens see that the state is itself approaching, to use the Whitney’s words, “a critical inflection point.” There’s fear on all sides of Texas’ spectrum right now. But there’s also hope, motivation, and action, which has been picked up and reflected by many of our state’s artists.
From a myopic view that omits America’s third coast, Texas is easy to pass over, in part because our state doesn’t fit any of America’s prescribed regions. While we are part of the South, our culture has a distinct hospitality and history that separates it. At the same time, some peoples’ perception of Texas is “the West” — cowboys, cacti, and cattle — but this is only accurate for the far west portion of the state. Texas’ biomes alone put it in its own category: we have a range of piney woods, prairies, marshlands, planes, plateaus, mountains, and deserts. In a way, because Texas — as a state, a landscape, a place, a people — doesn’t really represent anything specific, it ends up representing everything.
First, the numbers: Texas has a $2.4 trillion economy that is, according to the state’s governor’s office, “the eighth-largest economy among the nations of the world, larger than Russia, Canada, Italy and more.” In the U.S., it is only second to California. The state’s incredibly diverse population in 2020 clocked in at 29,145,505 (again, second to California); Texas is also home to three of the U.S.’ ten largest cities. The Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex, according to census data, “had the highest numeric increase in population between 2021 and 2022 of any U.S. metro area.”
Second, the art: Texas is home to one of the most fascinating cross sections of artists living and working in America today. But although the art being created here can (and does) stand up against art from anywhere else, it can only do so if given the chance. Considering the political climate of Texas as a microcosm of the U.S., and our propensity to believe that artists have the ability to imagine a better future, it would seem that the artists living here would be especially attuned to comment on today’s issues. Texas’ artists are an underground guerrilla movement working in plain sight, who are, together but separately, finding ways to (not so) subtly turn the state into their own vision of America.
It is a travesty for a show that describes itself as a “‘dissonant chorus,’ unharmonious in its collectivity,” as the 2024 Biennial does, to omit representation from Texas, which as both an ideology and a place is as dissonant as they come. The 2022 Biennial, which was co-curated by short-term Texan David Breslin (and, according to the New York Times paid “particular attention to Native artists and the U.S.-Mexico border”), did little better. It included only one Texas-based artist (Rick Lowe) and two Texas-born artists (Lisa Alvarado and Terence Nance), none of whom are from the U.S.-Mexico border region. The show’s press release read: “dynamics of borders and what constitutes ‘American’ are explored by artists from Mexico, specifically Ciudad Juárez and Tijuana, and First Nations artists in Canada, as well as by artists born outside of North America.” Do you know who else have to constantly navigate the U.S.-imposed sociopolitical ideas around (and fluidity between) borders and what constitutes “American”? South Texas’ artists.
Although the Whitney Biennial can never fully represent where America is today, and there are many areas of the country that get short shrift, the continued omission of Texas-based talent that could bring a wholly unique perspective to the issues the museum repeatedly says are close to the show’s heart is a glaring, egregious error. I’m not suggesting the names of Texas artists who could’ve been included in this or the 2022 edition simply because there are too many to count.
The 2024 Biennial’s curators made approximately 200 studio visits with artists across the country. If 69 artists are included in the show, that leaves about 131 visits with people who were not. Given the curators’ home base of New York (and the city’s sheer density of artists), it wouldn’t be surprising if many of those visits were spread out between there and Los Angeles. While I don’t know if the curators visited anyone in Texas, there’s an inherent issue in the fact that many of our state’s artists are not traditionally on the radar of people living elsewhere, despite the constant churning of exhibitions and initiatives aiming to show off Texas talent to anyone willing to listen. The omission is perhaps even more serious if the curators’ visits did include a jaunt around the state that ultimately yielded nothing.
The art and artists of Texas deserve to be looked at critically; this will only happen when the people who choose to live and work here are taken seriously by the larger art world. All of us in the trenches here day in and day out — writers, gallerists, curators, nonprofits, arts workers — are doing our part. It is, unfortunately, now up to the larger institutions, to those holding the reins in art metroplexes, to decide if they will put their actions where their words are, or if they want to instead strap on blinders and ignore the future.
