5-Star Exhibition at MoMa New York: Jack Whitten The Messenger

There, he decided to become an artist. Through his exploration of materials and tools—from new paints to Afro-combs and electrostatic printing—Whitten invented art-making techniques that were the first of their kind. Through his confrontation with racial prejudice and technological change, he made art matter in a world in turmoil. This retrospective is the first to span all six decades and every medium of Whitten’s innovative practice, and features more than 175 paintings, sculptures, and works on paper that illuminate his singular artistic journey.

In the 1970s, Whitten experimented with pulling layers of acrylic paint across a floor-bound canvas in a sweeping movement, producing a luminous, quasi-photographic blur. In the 1990s, he cut hardened sheets of acrylic paint into thousands of mosaic tiles to assemble richly textured paintings that suggest pixels or galaxies. For decades, Whitten spent his summers in Greece, constructing sculptures that fused the arts of Africa and the ancient Mediterranean with contemporary technologies. He often dedicated his works to figures in Black history, as if he were a messenger—and his art a way of sending meaning out into the world. “I am a conduit for the spirit,” he declared. “It flows through me and manifests in the materiality of paint.”

Jack Whitten: The Messenger presents a revelatory history of the artist’s exploration of race, technology, jazz, love, and war. From the upheaval of the 1960s to the end of his life in 2018, Whitten faced great pressure to pursue representational art as a form of activism. Yet he dared to invent forms of abstraction—and offered the world a new way to see.

Exhibition ends August 2

Main Image: Jack Whitten. Atopolis: For Édouard Glissant. 2014. Acrylic on canvas, 8 panels, overall 124 1/2 × 248 1/2″ (316.2 × 631.2 cm). The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Acquired through the generosity of Sid R. Bass, Lonti Ebers, Agnes Gund, Henry and Marie-Josée Kravis, Jerry Speyer and Katherine Farley, and Daniel and Brett Sundheim. © 2025 The Museum of Modern Art, New York, Photo by Jonathan Muzikar.