This afternoon the Whitney Museum named the three curators who will select the artists and works for its 2014 Biennial, the 77th edition of the bi-annual exhibition and the last one to be held in the institution’s Marcel Breuer-designed building on Madison Avenue before its relocation to the Meatpacking District. They are Tate Modern film curator Stuart Comer, Institute of Contemporary Art Philadelphia associate curator Anthony Elms, and Michelle Grabner, a professor and chair of the painting and drawing department at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

In an unusual move, rather than collaborating on the entire exhibition, each of the curators will be in charge of one floor of the museum. Two of the Whitney’s on-staff curators, Elisabeth Sussman and Jay Sanders — who co-curated the 2012 Biennial — will serve as advisers for the three curators. The exhibition will open in March 2014, with a complete roster of participating artists to be released in late 2013.

“We chose to make the last Biennial in the Breuer building before our move downtown an experiment with a new curatorial structure,” Whitney chief curator Donna De Salvo said in today’s announcement. “By flinging open the Museum’s doors metaphorically, we hope to create a platform in which voices from outside the Whitney can enliven the conversation around contemporary art in the United States. Hailing from Chicago, Philadelphia, and London, each curator will bring a personal approach to the process, creating an exciting mix of emerging and established artists that is the Biennial’s hallmark.”

— Benjamin Sutton

(Photo via Whitney/Facebook.)

Tags: Anthony Elms, Benjamin Sutton, Michelle Grabner, News, Stuart Comer, Whitney Biennial, Whitney Museum