All Photos By Gail

Have you been over to the Whitney Museum yet, to see the massive Frank Stella Retrospective? Geoffrey and I went a couple of weeks ago and it was absolutely packed, so maybe you want go sooner rather than later. Because it is super cool and there is so much art to look at that you may want to go twice.

Maybe you don’t know who Frank Stella is, and that’s OK. It is impossible to know every great artist. I’m not going to spend a lot of time giving you background information or discussing why Frank Stella (b. 1936) is one of the most important living American artists, because in this case I think the pictures should do all the talking.

And if you are moved by the art, then you should be compelled to seek out more information on the man who created it. The Whitney Museum retrospective is the most comprehensive presentation of Stella’s career to date, showcasing his prolific output from the mid-1950s to the present through approximately 100 works, including paintings, reliefs, maquettes, sculptures and drawings.

The exhibition features Stella’s best-known works alongside rarely seen examples drawn from collections around the world. It fills the Whitney’s entire fifth floor, an 18,000-square-foot gallery that is the Museum’s largest space for temporary exhibitions.

The works are not in chronological order. They are just placed where Frank Stella felt they would fit best.

There are a lot of works that look similar to the piece pictured above, and they are sort of painting/sculpture hybrids. I love all of them.

Here’s another one. It is so fantastic and gorgeous. Kids probably love these.

The four small pieces above are called Maquettes, which are studies for some of his larger pieces. I love that he used soda cans and other household items to create them. Click on the photo to enlarge for greater detail.

Between 1985 and 1993, Stella produced a number of works that were inspired by Herman Mellville’s Moby Dick. As a sort of homage to that, on the day we visited, the museum sponsored a “marathon reading” of the novel, Moby Dick, which is being conducted by the man standing on the far left in the above photo. The three large works on the wall behind him are from the Moby Dick series.

This one is a good background for the selfies.

I want you to appreciate how difficult it was to get pictures without people in them, which is my thing.

Here’s a cool detail of the piece in the photo right above it.

This one is maybe my favorite.

Don’t you want to see all of this stuff in person? Sure you do.

On the fifth floor’s outdoor patio there are two gigantic star sculptures, Black Star (above) and Wooden Star (below). These photos were taken from the exterior staircase on the 6th floor.

Frank Stella: A Retrospective will be on Exhibit Through February 7th, 2016. Visit Whitney Dot Org for more information including museum hours and address, and special events associated with exhibit!