Carmen de Monteflores at Whitney

Artnet’s New York spring museum roundup put the 2026 Whitney Biennial back at the center of the season — and singled out two paintings by Carmen de Monteflores. (news.artnet.com) The Whitney Biennial opened March 8 and runs through August 23 at the Whitney Museum of American Art in Manhattan’s Meatpacking District. The museum says the 82nd edition includes 56 artists, duos, and collectives across floors 1, 5, 6, and 8. (whitney.org) De Monteflores is listed by the Whitney as born in 1933 in San Juan, Puerto Rico, and living in Berkeley, California. The museum describes her contribution as shaped canvases from the late 1960s shown alongside sculptures by her daughter, Andrea Fraser. (whitney.org) That pairing gave the Biennial one of its clearest story lines this spring. Artnet reported that curators Marcela Guerrero and Drew Sawyer decided to include both artists after Fraser urged them to see works her mother had stored for decades in the Bay Area. (news.artnet.com) The Whitney Biennial has carried that kind of weight for decades. The museum calls it the longest-running survey of American art, a fixture since 1932, with the current every-two-years format in place since 1973. (whitney.org) This year’s edition was organized by Guerrero and Sawyer with Beatriz Cifuentes and Carina Martinez, Rubio Butterfield Family Fellow. The Whitney says the show gathers artists from across the United States and from places shaped by American power, from Afghanistan to Vietnam. (whitney.org) De Monteflores’s work also stands out because painting is not the dominant mode of the show. Artnet wrote in March that her large, brightly colored shaped canvases “stand out in a show almost devoid of painting,” and identified her as the exhibition’s oldest artist at 92. (news.artnet.com) The Whitney says de Monteflores stopped painting in 1969 after facing limited opportunities for women in the art world, then earned a doctorate in psychology and wrote five novels. Her reappearance in the Biennial turns two late-1960s works into part of New York’s busiest museum season. (whitney.org) Artnet’s roundup placed the Biennial in the same spring conversation as shows at the Frick, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the American Folk Art Museum. In that list, the Whitney was still the stop Artnet said “you just have to see.” (news.artnet.com)