Sarah Sze and Adam Weinberg at New York’s Whitney Museum

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The Whitney Presents the Eighth Annual Annenberg Lecture: Sarah Sze in Conversation with Adam D. Weinberg

Monday, 5 November at 
7 p.m.

Since the late 1990s, Sarah Sze has created remarkable sculptural installations, wall reliefs, and works on paper. She is perhaps best known for her immense, intricate, site-specific installations that penetrate walls, hang from ceilings, and burrow into the ground. Sze's practice exists at the intersection of sculpture, painting, and architecture. Her signature sculptural aesthetic involves transforming our perception of ordinary things, including Q-tips, pushpins, disposable razors, plastic flowers, real plants, straws, tea bags, ladders, electric fans, and matchsticks. She assembles these mundane items into works of astonishing movement, balance, poise, and beauty.

By playing with scale and illusion, and through the accretion of innumerable small objects, Sze creates works that seem to defy gravity and form new universes. The Whitney has exhibited and supported her work since early in her career (she was included in the 2000 Whitney Biennial and had a solo presentation in 2003 entitled ‘The Triple Point of Water’) and the Museum remains committed to her vision of what an artwork can be.

For the 8th Walter Annenberg Annual Lecture, Sarah Sze will speak about her work in a conversation with Adam D. Weinberg, the Whitney's Alice Pratt Brown Director.

Admission is free but registration is required. Please visit whitney.org to register for seats, which are available on a first-come, first-served basis.

Whitney Museum of American Art, 945 Madison Avenue at 75th Street, in the Museum’s lower gallery.

About Sarah Sze

Born in Boston in 1969, Sarah Sze lives and works in New York. She has exhibited internationally, including at MUDAM Luxembourg (2011); BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art (2009); Liverpool Biennial (2008); Maison Hermés, Tokyo (2008); Malmö Konsthall, Sweden (2006); Whitney Museum, New York (2003); Walker Art Center, Minneapolis (2002); and Fondation Cartier in Paris (1999). She has done important installations for the High Line, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the Seattle Opera House. Sarah Sze was the recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship in 2003. In 2012 it was announced that Sze will represent the United States within the American Pavilion at the 55th Venice Biennale, in 2013.

Her work is in many national and international museum collections, including The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Guggenheim Museum, New York; The New Museum, New York; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, CA; Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, CA; Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego, San Diego, CA; Detroit Institute of Art, Detroit, MI; Albright Knox Gallery, Buffalo, NY; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN; National Gallery of Victoria, Australia; Cartier Foundation, Paris, France; 21st Century Museum of Art, Kanazawa, Japan; Boston Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA; Fogg Museum of Art, Boston, MA; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, Chicago, IL; and the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa.

Walter Annenberg Annual Lecture

In honour of the late Walter H. Annenberg, philanthropist, patron of the arts, and former ambassador, the Whitney Museum of American Art established the Walter Annenberg Annual Lecture to advance this country’s understanding of its art and culture. Support for this lecture and for public programmes at the Whitney Museum is provided, in part, by Jack and Susan Rudin in honour of Beth Rudin DeWoody, public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council, and by the Museum’s Education Committee.

About the Whitney

The Whitney Museum of American Art is the world’s leading museum of twentieth-century and contemporary art of the United States. Focusing particularly on works by living artists, the Whitney is celebrated for presenting important exhibitions and for its renowned collection, which comprises over 19,000 works by more than 2,900 artists. With a history of exhibiting the most promising and influential artists and provoking intense debate, the Whitney Biennial, the Museum's signature exhibition, has become the most important survey of the state of contemporary art in the United States. In addition to its landmark exhibitions, the Museum is known internationally for events and educational programs of exceptional significance and as a centre for research, scholarship, and conservation.

Founded by sculptor and arts patron Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney in 1930, the Whitney was first housed on West 8th Street in Greenwich Village. The Museum relocated in 1954 to West 54th Street and, in 1966, inaugurated its present home, designed by Marcel Breuer, at 945 Madison Avenue on the Upper East Side. While its vibrant programme of exhibitions and events continues uptown, the Whitney is constructing a new building, designed by Renzo Piano, in downtown Manhattan. Located at the corner of Gansevoort and Washington Streets in the Meatpacking District, at the southern entrance to the High Line, the new building, which has generated immense momentum and support, will enable the Whitney to vastly increase the size and scope of its exhibition and programming space. Ground was broken on the new building in May 2011, and it is projected to open to the public in 2015.