ARTnews Awards 2025 Historical Artist of the Year: Jack Whitten

Jack Whitten for “Jack Whitten: The Messenger” at the Museum of Modern Art, New York
March 23–August 2, 2025
Curators: Michelle Kuo, with Helena Klevorn, Dana Liljegren, and David Sledge Across his six-decade career, Jack Whitten repeatedly found daring, innovative, and new ways of wielding paint, only rarely using the traditional oil-on-canvas method that has long dominated his chosen medium. During the late 1960s, he began using acrylic, a type of paint that dries faster