Shifting Landscapes explores how evolving political, ecological, and social issues motivate artists' representations of the world around them. Drawn from the Whitney Museum’s collection, the exhibition features 120 works by more than 80 artists—including Jean-Michel Basquiat, Firelei Báez, Jane Dickson, Gordon Matta-Clark, Amalia Mesa-Bains, and Purvis Young—most of which are on view at the Museum for the first time.

While landscape has long been associated with picturesque vistas and documentary accounts of place, this exhibition presents a more expansive interpretation. Organized in thematic sections, it includes sculptural assemblages made from locally sourced objects, ecofeminist approaches to land art, and the legacies of documentary landscape photography.

Other works focus on specific geographies such as New York City and 1970s Los Angeles, or on imagined spaces where humans, animals, and the land become one. Whether depicting the effects of industrialization, grappling with geopolitical borders, or proposing alternative worlds that challenge the idea of a “natural” landscape, the works foreground how we shape—and are shaped by—the spaces around us.

Learn more at the exhibition website.

Artwork: Jean-Michel Basquiat, Untitled, 1980. © Estate of Jean-Michel Basquiat. Licensed by Artestar, New York