Jack Whitten The Messenger
2025: My Favorite Exhibitions
While I was in graduate school, to preserve my energy, I had to be selective about the shows I saw. 2025 has been my year to get back in the museum, and what a great year to jump back in. I saw some incredible exhibitions that spoke to the current political, social, and cultural climate of 2025.
For this series of Artletters, I will be highlighting my favorite exhibitions of 2025, sharing my thoughts, videos, and links to see and learn more. As always, I hope these Artletters inspire you in times of doubt and push you to imagine a world you want to live in.
With Love,
Ciarra K. Walters
Jack Whitten The Messenger:
Whitten was a visionary. An artist before his time, his labor-intensive, six-decade career was composed of painting, sculpture, and mosaics. His meticulous mosaic paintings were created by pouring, drying, and cutting acrylic paint (he called them slabs), then assembling the pieces to make these masterpieces that honored Black artists and memorialized world events. In his other large-scale paintings, Whitten scraped layers of acrylic paint across the canvas using objects like a hair pick or his hand-made rake-like tool, which he named “the developer.” Through and through, Whitten’s practice continued to move forward and expand, in material, technique, and curiosity.
MoMA did a phenomenal job with curation and context behind Whitten’s work. Playing jazz music from Whitten’s vinyl collection in select galleries, MoMA transformed the museum space from a white cube into a living and breathing atmosphere. The wall labels featured context about societal events that sparked Whitten to make particular works, and they shared what he was feeling.
Because Whitten was an open book (read his writings in Notes From the Woodshed), the context around the work felt deeply personal and relatable. Speaking towards a few events in the 60s, Whitten wrote, “How can anyone justify staying in the studio when people are dying? What is an artist supposed to do?” He expressed how angry he was during those times, and when he was ready to choose violence, he chose art.
Personally, I have asked myself this same question. What is the point of making art when people are dying, wars are happening, violence continues, and greed destroys each other and our planet? Through Jack Whitten, I realized art is not only a way for the artist to work through these questions and feelings, but it also offers a way for societies to remember.
It was encouraging to see how Whitten processed hard moments and how he used art to keep going, even through times of uncertainty and lack of support.
Although I love all the shows I saw this year, Jack Whitten The Messenger takes the #1 spot in my heart. I traveled to New York City twice to see it.
Before his death, the last thing Whitten wrote in his journal was:
”Art is our compass to the cosmos.”
What a quote. What a man. What an artist.
May his spirit continue to fly high, fly free, and fly eternally.
You can see the work, read the subtitles, and hear the audio from this exhibition on MoMA’s website.
A Few Favorite Works:
One of my favorite series is Whitten’s Black Monolith Series. These large paintings, made up of acrylic slabs, were inspired by actual monoliths in Greece —a place he visited every summer. Whitten said this series is about Black people who “made amazing contributions, someone who has made a difference” in society.
I love how he made this connection between these large stones that look like monuments with Black people who actually deserve monuments and who made monumental contributions to society.
Whitten’s work becomes a vehicle to remember.
Black Monolith IV (For Jacob Lawrence) brought me to tears. Something about seeing one artist honor another with such a large work was emotional. In Black Monolith II (Homage to Ralph Ellison, The Invisible Man), Whitten used real eggshells in this piece. It made me think about Ellison’s way of describing how Black people move through the world in a visible but invisible manner, and just how fragile that line is. He also used molasses, copper, salt, coal, ash, chocolate, onion, herbs, rust, and a razor blade to make this work. Insane!
In the 1970s, Whitten began a series of works that involved layering paint and scraping it across the canvas. This series was alive. With every movement, a new color and layer popped out. These paintings are not ones you can simply stare at. You had to be motion with it. Move to the left, right, forward, or back; each direction revealed something new. It made me think, how the hell did Whitten think of something like this? I unfortunately didn’t grab the title and date of this painting. Based on similar works from this gallery, it was most likely made in the early 1970s.
I felt deeply connected to Whitten’s art practice and saw many similarities between ours. Not only was he a Sagittarius like me, but he also used his practice to remember and uplift the legacy of other artists, which has been an important aspect of my own practice.
In Elizabeth Catlett, Triptych (First Set) Loop #12, Loop #13, Look #14, I immediately saw Catlett’s sculptures. Whitten made this work in 2012, the same year Catlett passed away. I saw this piece and saw Catlett in the cosmos. I love how I can see both Whitten and Catlett in this artwork. In my humble opinion, this is the right way to pay homage to an artist in an artwork.
The Blacks made me laugh when I read the title. I thought about how white people use that phrase to describe us. What I loved about this piece was this cool cat in the middle. The glasses give off villain-ish. His demeanor is calm, cool, and collected. From the hair, the smirk, to the suit, he gives a “I know your next move before you even do…try me” energy.
But when I looked closer, I saw a hooded figure in his tie. Could be the KKK or could be him in a shiesty?
The questions that come to mind:
Why all the masked figures? A play on Black people’s ability to walk in the world masked? Indivisible/visible?
Why all the white? A form of white face that Black people have put on?
There is something cool, yet haunting, about this painting.
What to Watch:
Books to Read:
You can buy the catalogue from the Jack Whitten The Messenger exhibition here.
That book is a little pricey, but worth it! I also recommend “Jack Whitten Notes from the Woodshed”. Whitten named his studio the Woodshed and kept a studio journal for several decades. You can read his personal writings here. —he gave Hauser & Wirth his permission to publish, btw.
Listen Here:
Jack Whitten December 5, 1939 - January 20, 2018
Just beautiful! Thank you for sharing this insightful article!
Jack Whitten is my favorite artist, period. Brings me to tears. 💯💐🫶🏾