What Whitney Museum does: Whitney Museum collects, stores, and displays modern and antique American art.
Mission: The Whitney Museum aims to become the connection between the community and American art.
Size and Presence: Whitney Museum currently employs around 344 employees in its branches around New York.
Best Known For: Whitney Museum is popular for its broad portfolio of 20th-century and 21st-century art with its special focus on products of living artists.
The good bits: Whitney Museum provides an immersive experience for workers with new artwork additions being made daily and lots of interesting stuff to do.
The not-so-good bits: Working at Whitney Museum comes with long working hours and a sophisticated pecking order that makes incorporating feedback quite difficult.
The Whitney Museum has become a foundational element for American art and has its root in Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney’s desire to make artistic products accessible.
Mrs. Whitney began her route to making art more accessible with her opening of the Whitney Studio in 1914. The studio allowed living artists to showcase their art to a broad audience.
The first location for the Whitney Museum of American Art was on West Eighth Street near Fifth Avenue, in 1930 and was opened in 1931. In 1954, the museum expanded to West 54th Street and later, to Madison Avenue at 75th Street in 1963 and housed the precious collectibles till 2014. The final spot for the Museum was at 99 Gansevoort Street in 2015.
Currently, the museum houses and displays over 25,000 s0th and 21st-century artworks from more than 3,000 artists in the United States.
The Whitney Museum aims to develop a work environment where everyone feels welcome, valued, and heard. At the museum, individuals from every background are welcome to contribute their unique insights and experiences to contribute to a diverse and inclusive work environment.
Whitney Museum fosters participation throughout its recruitment process and looks out for talents that fit into its culture and values.
The application process to Whitney Museum starts with graduates and interns scrolling through job vacancies on the museum’s website. Next graduate and internship applicants fill out an online application and are invited for interview sessions. These sessions help candidates demonstrate their strongest attributes and showcase how they fit into the museum’s culture.
Whitney Museum as one of the world's most exciting museums delivers a plethora of opportunities for interns and graduates to train, develop skills, and enjoy valuable contact that’ll see them develop in the industry.
The museum also provides volunteering opportunities that’ll help students enjoy a first-hand experience of how modern museums work.
Employees at Whitney Museum earn an average annual salary of around $54,000 while interns earn around $36,287 per year.
Whitney Museum looks to develop a sustained, long-standing, and beneficial relationship that gives the museum an educational role and one that fosters the development of artists in communities.
Whitney Museum has collaborated on projects like the American Indian Community House, The Door, Fulton Youth of The Future, and the LGBT Centre. These collaborations act as a voice for several communities and give them an outlet to express themselves and feel heard.
In a bid to expose the public to rare artworks, Whitney Museum has enjoyed its fair share of controversies. One such case was when the museum acquired artworks for cheaper amounts to host a charity event.
The purchase of these artworks to demonstrate social justice was done by the research head at an auction. Those artworks were meant for personal consumption and led to an outrage in the media with people accusing the museum of taking advantage of artists. The museum canceled the charity event but has still maintained its desire to raise money for social causes.