Whitney to hold Jeff Koons Retrospective in 2014

The Whitney Museum is setting up it's last show before it makes a move to its new location in the Meat Packing District. The Museum will present a Jeff Koons retrospective that will fill all of its Madison Avenue location. Curator Scott Rothkopf said, "This will be the first time a single artist has ever taken over almost the entire museum, but we wanted to choose an iconic American artist as a farewell to the Breuer building.”


The Whitney takes special pleasure in organizing this Koons show as other museums have tried to in the past and failed. A Koons show is costly due to his large scale sculptures and paintings that require special fabrications and can cause technical difficulties due to size. This show, “Celebration,” is a group of large-scale sculptures and paintings. "Because of their size and the materials — stainless steel and plastics that are hard to manufacture — they require special use of foundries, a cost that has nearly bankrupted some dealers who tried to produce the pieces." (New York Times).

Rothkopf said this Whitney show would cover 35 years of the artist's career from 1979-2014. The show will include 100 works including paintings, sculptures, drawing, and prints. The exhibition will open in January 2014 at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles; then in June it will go to the Whitney before traveling to the Pompidou Center in Paris in December 2014.


Books about Jeff Koons in the Art Division