Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney was,
even as a child,
considered the wealthiest woman
in America.
She was somebody...
as a daughter of the Vanderbilts,
her every action was followed.
She was in a social circle
in which discretion was highly valued.
She wasn't able to express her opinion.
She had to be very discreet and demure.
And when she married
Harry Payne Whitney,
joining these two fortunes,
she became truly the most...
the wealthiest woman in America.
And to her credit,
she bristled at the constraints
of the world that she found herself in
and began, in 1900, to work as an artist,
began to take classes in sculpture,
and then eventually found studio space
in MacDougal Alley and began...
started her own studio
and was a sculptor in her own right.
She created commissions
that were around the country,
she showed in exhibitions,
and it was from the platform
of being an artist
that she began to recognize
the plight of other American artists
who really were unable
to show their work
and certainly unable to sell it.
Gertrude Whitney and Juliana Force
decided to start their own museum
in 1929
at a point when the Whitney Studio Club,
the precursor to the museum,
had become so successful
that they decided it was time
to do something more permanent.
.
HASKELL: The main players
were Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney
and Juliana Force,
who began as her assistant
and was very charismatic,
very strong, very decisive,
and the two women, in a way,
formed the flip side
of a single personality.
Breaking Ground is an exhibition
that surveys the collection
that Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney gave
when the museum was founded.
.
NICHOLAS: The founding collection
is very democratic in scope,
very egalitarian,
from the most conservative
academic portraiture
to more modernist abstraction
like the work of Stuart Davis.
.
HASKELL: The exhibition includes work
that hasn't, in some cases,
been seen for over 50 years.
Eugene Speicher, for example,
was voted the best artist in 1930,
beating out Georgia O'Keeffe,
John Marin, Thomas Hart Benton,
everyone.
.
The exhibition also reveals
how taste comes around
and is very cyclic.
So there are certain artists
in this exhibition
whose work seems very fresh,
as if it could have been done yesterday.
Robert Chanler, for example.
.
This exhibition offers a wonderful view
of what was going on in America
at a certain period of time.
There's no other place that you could go
and see the range of activities,
the range of styles and subjects,
that American artists were engaged in,
and to realize that art
is not just about a few masterpieces
or about a limited number of artists,
but that there's a whole community
of artists that are working.
And in many cases,
the community of artists,
the sort of foundation of art
at any given time, is fascinating.
It tells you something
about the spirit of a moment,
that we can look at masterpieces,
but looking at this exhibition
tells you something about the energy
and the vitality
and the egalitarian quality
of what was happening in America.
.