Whitney Names 56 Artists For 2026 Biennial That Promises Not to Simplify ‘Strangeness of Our Times’

The Whitney Biennial has named 56 artists for its 82nd edition, slated to open on March 8 next year. Curated by Marcela Guerrero, the Whitney’s DeMartini Family Curator, and Drew Sawyer, the Sondra Gilman Curator of Photography, the show will examine “various forms of relationality, including interspecies kinships, familial relations, geopolitical entanglements, technological affinities, shared mythologies, and infrastructural supports,” per the Whitney’s website.

Among the chosen artists are Basel Abbas and Ruanne Abou-Rahme, an artist duo of Palestinian descent, Kamrooz Aram (Iran/US), Joshua Citarella (US), Sung Tieu (Vietnam/Germany), and many more.

In an interview with the New York Times, Sawyer said that he and Guerrero spent a year visiting over 300 artist studios around the world to put the list together.

“There will be new discoveries, even for art-world insiders,” Sawyer said. He added that several of the artists have not frequently been shown in New York.

Guerrero said the biennial—which is the longest-running survey of contemporary art in the US—will interrogate themes such as kinship and infrastructure to try and shed light on how artists connect with the world, but also sometimes reject it. The event will also question the US’s role in global affairs.

The Whitney Biennial 2026 “offers a vivid atmospheric survey of contemporary American art shaped by a moment of profound transition,” the Whitney said on its website. “Rather than offering a definitive answer to life today, [this edition] foregrounds mood and texture, inviting visitors into environments that evoke tension, tenderness, humor, and unease. Together, the works capture the complexity of the present and propose imaginative, unruly, and unexpected forms of coexistence.”

The museum’s director, Scott Rothkopf, said that Sawyer and Guerrero’s selection “doesn’t try to simplify the strangeness of our times… It allows visitors to encounter the world as artists are sensing it, structurally unstable and emotionally charged yet also full of possibility.”

Of the 56 artists, most are millennials, so under 45 years old, while roughly a third self-identify as queer. The majority work out of New York or California.

Guerrero told the New York Times that the biennial will try to show people how the participating artists work and live. “Expanding the notion of what American art is—or even what America is—was fun, and not typically part of what we do,” she said.

Alongside the Venice Biennale and Documenta, the Whitney Biennial ranks among the most significant recurring exhibitions in the art world. Unlike those international festivals, however, the Whitney Biennial has a clearly defined mandate: each edition aims to present a broad snapshot of American art at a particular moment in time. Organized by the Whitney Museum in New York, the exhibition occupies galleries throughout the institution.

Here’s the full artist list: