The Whitney Museum of American Art
The Whitney Museum of American Art was the first museum that devoted its collections entirely to modern American artists while they were still alive.
Founded in 1930 by Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney with her own art collection of 600 pieces. Whitney’s collection of non-traditional American artists had been turned down by other art museums, so she promptly started her own. The Whitney Museum of American Art was launched in Greenwich Village with works by George Bellows, Edward Hopper, John Sloan and Thomas Hart Benton. Along the way, the Whitney assumed a vast collection of art and was among the first art The Soyer Brothersmuseums to recognize video as a new art form. In 1970, Edward Hopper’s widow, Josephine, donated his entire artistic estate to the Whitney Museum of American Art. The Hopper collection includes 2,000 pieces ranging from paintings to prints and watercolors. Today, the Whitney Museum of American Art owns more than 12,000 works of art and a research library of 30,000 volumes.