Installation view of Mary Heilmann: Long Line (Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, April 9, 2025-January 19, 2026). On wall: Long Line, 2025. On floor: Monochrome Chairs, 2015; April Chairs, 2025. Photograph by Trevor Felder
Join artists Jacqueline Humphries & Stanley Whitney, and Whitney Museum associate curator Laura Phipps for a spirited conversation on the work and legacy of Mary Heilmann, in celebration of her current exhibitions: Water Way at Guild Hall and Long Line at the Whitney Museum.
From the oceanic calm of East Hampton to five decades of bold abstraction in New York, Heilmann’s work bridges place, memory, and experimentation. Whitney and Phipps will explore her lasting influence, playful approach to color and form, and the creative throughline connecting both shows.
The conversation will be moderated by Guild Hall Museum Director & Curator of Visual Arts Melanie Crader.
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Jacqueline Humphries
Jacqueline Humphries lives and works in New York. Her work was included in the 59th Venice Biennale in 2022, and was the subject of a major survey at the Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus, in 2021. Other recent solo institutional shows include Dia Art Foundation, Bridgehampton, New York (2019); Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh (2015); and Contemporary Art Center New Orleans (2015). Significant group shows include those held at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago (2024); National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC (2022); Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, DC (2019); San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (2016); Tate Modern (2015); and the 2014 Whitney Biennial, among others.
Humphries's work is in the collections of The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo; The Art Institute of Chicago; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, DC; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Tate Modern, London; Centre Pompidou, Paris; and Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris, among others.
Photo: Martha Fleming-Ives
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Stanley Whitney
Stanley Whitney has been exploring the formal possibilities of color since the mid-1970s. His current motif, honed over many years, is a stacked composition of numerous saturated color fields, delineated by three to five horizontal bands running the length of a canvas. The cumulative effect of Whitney’s multicolored palette is not only one of masterly pictorial balance and a sense of continuum with other works in this ongoing series, but also that of fizzing, formal sensations caused by internal conflicts and resolutions within each painting. Taking his cues from early Minimalism, Color Field painters, jazz music, and his favorite historical artists – Titian, Velázquez, and Cézanne among them – Whitney is as much an exponent of the process-based, spatially-gridded square in art as Josef Albers, Sol LeWitt, and Agnes Martin.
Stanley Whitney was born in Philadelphia in 1946 and lives and works in Bridgehampton, New York, and Parma, Italy. He holds a BFA from Kansas City Art Institute and an MFA from Yale University. He is currently Professor emeritus of painting and drawing at Tyler School of Art, Temple University. In 2024, the Buffalo AKG Art Museum presented a major retrospective survey of Whitney's career. The exhibition traveled to the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, and and will be on view at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston from April 17th- September 1st, 2025.
Solo exhibitions include Stanley Whitney: The Italian Paintings, Palazzo Tiepolo Passi, Venice, an official collateral event of the 59th Venice Biennale Museum (2022); Focus – Stanley Whitney at the Modern Art Museum, Fort Worth, TX, USA (2017); and Dance the Orange at the Studio Museum in Harlem, New York, NY, USA (2015). His work has been included in significant group exhibitions, including Inherent Structure, Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus, OH, USA (2018), documenta 14 in Athens, Greece and Kassel, Germany (2017), Outside the Lines: Black in the Abstract at Contemporary Art Museum Houston (2014), and Utopia Station at the 50th Venice Biennale (2003). He was elected as a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters (2017), was awarded the Robert De Niro Sr. Prize in Painting (2011), and received a Guggenheim Fellowship (1996). Whitney’s work is held in the collections of many prominent museums, including those of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City, the Pérez Art Museum Miami, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Buffalo AKG Art Museum, the Studio Museum in Harlem in New York, and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.
Photo: Miranda Leighfield
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Laura Phipps
Laura Phipps is an Associate Curator at the Whitney Museum of American Art where she has recently curated Mary Heilmann: Long Line (2025) and Jaune Quick-to-See Smith: Memory Map (2023). Phipps' other projects at the Whtiney include Around Day’s End: Downtown NYC 1970-1985, and Virginia Overton: Sculpture Gardens and projects with Andrea Fraser, Michele Abeles and the show Flatlands of emerging painters.
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Melanie Crader
Melanie Crader joined Guild Hall in Summer of 2023 as the inaugural director of visual arts as Guild Hall opened its newly renovated galleries. Recently, she served as deputy director at the Parrish Art Museum, Water Mill, NY, where she also served as interim director. For 8 years prior, Melanie held the role of Director of Exhibitions and Publication Management at the Hammer Museum, UCLA, Los Angeles, where she was responsible for financial and administrative oversight of all curatorial initiatives, exhibitions, and publications. Managing the institution’s renowned exhibition program, she collaborated with local, national, and international institutional partners including The Met, Museum of Modern Art, Whitney Museum of American Art, Brooklyn Museum, MCA Chicago; Walker Art Center, Stedelijk Museum, and Pinacoteca de São Paulo.
During six years at the Menil Collection in Houston, she managed the operating budget and exhibition program, led a variety of special projects including institutional publications, oversaw major digital infrastructure initiatives, and implemented long-term budget planning for building projects and a capital campaign. Before entering the non-profit sector, Melanie worked in the marketing and communications department of an international investment company.
Originally from Louisiana, Melanie Crader, an artist and educator who taught at the university level, holds MFA from Ohio University, Athens; BA from McNeese State University, Lake Charles, LA; and attended the Banco Santander W30 Program, UCLA Anderson School of Management. She is a member of the American Exhibition Organizers and served on the Steering Committee from 2017 to 2021. For several years, she served on the Board of Directors and was an Artist Board Member of DiverseWorks Art Space, Houston.
Photo: Lori Hawkins
Sponsors
Visual Arts programs are supported by funding from Barbara and Richard S. Lane, Lucio and Joan Noto, The Michael Lynne Museum Endowment, The Melville Straus Family Endowment, and additional support provided by The Giuppy Nantista Fund and The Hoie Fund.
Additional support provided by Friends of the Museum: Sara Amani and Timothy Ward, Danielle Anderman, Shari and Jeff Aronson, The Artist Profile Archive, William L. Bernhard, Cara and John Fry, The Hayden Family Foundation, Susan Lacy, Robert Longo and Sophie Chahinian, Elin and Michael Nierenberg, Onna House, Lisa and Richard Perry, Laurie and Martin Scheinman, Jeff and Audrey Spiegel, Hillary and Jeff Suchman, Barbara Tober, Jane Wesman and Don Savelson, Neda Young, Yurman Family Foundation, and an anonymous donor.
Free gallery admission is sponsored, in part, by Landscape Details.
Mary Heilmann: Water Way:
Lead Sponsors: Agnes Gund, Ellen and Howard Katz, and The Tessler Family
Additional Support: Shelley Fox Aarons and Philip Aarons
Media Partner: CULTURED