Making Sixties Surreal: A Curatorial Roundtable

Why It Matters

The exhibition reshapes the understanding of 1960s American art, offering museums and scholars a more inclusive framework that acknowledges previously marginalized voices and influences future curatorial directions.

Key Takeaways

• Exhibition reexamines 1958‑1972 American art beyond pop, minimalism
• Curators highlight psychosexual, fantastical, revolutionary aesthetics across media
• Show foregrounds feminist, queer, artists of color previously marginalized
• Whitney leverages its collection to rewrite canonical art history narratives
• Panel discussion underscores collaborative research and new catalog as scholarly resource

Summary

The Whitney Museum hosted a curatorial roundtable titled “Making 60s Surreal,” introducing an ambitious exhibition that reassesses American art from 1958 to 1972. Featuring more than 100 artists, the show deliberately steps outside the familiar narratives of Pop and Minimalism to foreground a psychosexual, fantastical, and revolutionary aesthetic that cut across figuration, abstraction, and media.

Panelists explained that the exhibition’s core ambition is to expand the canon by surfacing feminist, queer, and artists of color whose work was historically sidelined. By tracing regional currents—from Chicago’s graphic confrontations with trauma to the Bay Area’s hybrid visual vocabularies—the curators illustrate how surrealist strategies functioned as a “permission‑giving” force, enabling artists to interrogate dominant political and technological systems of the era.

Specific references underscored the research depth: Dan Nadell’s biography of Rum, Joe Raphaeli’s early thesis painting, and the presence of works by Richard Lindner, Lee Mullikin, and others illustrate the exhibition’s blend of well‑known and newly rediscovered pieces. The discussion also highlighted the Whitney’s own collection, noting that roughly thirty percent of the works were acquired in the 1960s, linking the show to the museum’s institutional memory.

The roundtable positioned the Whitney as a site for revisionist storytelling, using the exhibition and its accompanying catalog to challenge entrenched art‑historical hierarchies. By presenting a more inclusive, multi‑regional narrative, the museum signals a shift toward curatorial practices that prioritize diversity, scholarly rigor, and the re‑contextualization of overlooked artistic contributions.

Original Description

Join us for an evening of conversation with Whitney curators Dan Nadel, Laura Phipps, Scott Rothkopf, and Kelly Long on the process of organizing Sixties Surreal, a groundbreaking survey that proposes an alternative art history of the 1960s in the United States. In dialogue with curator and scholar Michelle Kuo, the panel will delve into the behind-the-scenes research process, the development of key themes, and the works of several featured artists as well as the recontextualization of these works in today’s world—an echo of how artists of the 1960s sought to reconnect art with lived experience.

Speakers

Dan Nadel, Steven and Ann Ames Curator of Drawings and Prints

Laura Phipps, Associate Curator

Scott Rothkopf, Alice Pratt Brown Director

Kelly Long, Senior Curatorial Assistant

Michelle Kuo, Chief Curator at Large and Publisher, Museum of Modern Art, moderator