High School Watercolor Class Visits the Whitney Museum

After considering the meaning of being defined as an "American" artist, students examined the work of Archibald Motley, the war series by Jacob Lawrence, and a portrait of Andy Warhol by Alice Neel from the Whitney permanent collection. They viewed the work by Kevin Beasley who is the youngest artist ever exhibited at the current Whitney. Beasley is a sculptor who graduated from Yale and considered his African American heritage and the Yale campus in an intriguing installation including a kinetic sculpture based on sounds of a cotton gin.

In front of a collaborative sculpture by Andy Warhol and Jean Michel Basquiat, Jeannette Rodriguez-Perez a Whitney docent led the students in a 10-minute collaborative drawing exercise based on random headlines from the day's news.

Students finished the visit with a self-guided tour of the Andy Warhol exhibit on a day when the museum is closed to the public.

Story and photos provided by High School Art Teacher Lotus Do