Meg Onli and Zack Winokur to Curate 2028 Whitney Biennial

By Daniel Okafor

Meg Onli and Zack Winokur will curate the 83rd Whitney Biennial, which opens at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York in March 2028. The announcement fixes the curators and opening month; it leaves the artists, thematic framework, precise date and exhibition format unstated. The first question is not what the show will look like, but whether the museum will soon supply enough information to judge it.

What has the Whitney actually announced?

At present, the note does three things: identifies Onli and Winokur, dates the opening to March 2028, and places the event within the Whitney's 83rd Biennial series. It does not publish a checklist, a theme, installation plans, catalogue details or a curatorial statement. Neither curator receives a quoted explanation in the announcement.

That silence matters. On paper, a curatorial appointment carries a promise of specificity. This one largely rests on the pair's prior work. The announcement is closer to a programme note than a prospectus, and the burden now sits with the museum to explain how a museum curator and a performing-arts director will shape one exhibition.

What does Onli bring?

Onli's route into the Whitney gives this appointment a clear line of institutional continuity. She joined in 2023 as curator-at-large and was subsequently named the Nancy and Fred Poses curator. Before that, she co-curated the museum's 2024 Whitney Biennial with Chrissie Iles.

Her earlier posts included co-director and curator of the Underground Museum in Los Angeles and Andrea B. Laporte associate curator at the Institute of Contemporary Art at the University of Pennsylvania.

She also founded the Black Visual Archive in 2010, a project dedicated to reviewing contemporary Black visual culture. That undertaking provides one concrete frame for assessing her latest Biennial appointment, although the announcement gives no thesis and does not say how the archive's concerns will shape the 2028 selection.

What does Winokur bring?

The announcement presents Winokur primarily through performing arts. He is artistic director and co-founder of AMOC* (American Modern Opera Company), a collective comprising singers, dancers, instrumentalists, writers and producers. In 2025, AMOC* organised a five-week performance festival at Lincoln Center in New York.

His institutional experience also includes Little Island in New York, where he served from 2024 to 2026 as its first producing artistic director. Before that, he was artistic director of NYPopsUp, a statewide initiative intended to reopen the performing arts following the COVID-19 pandemic.

Those roles document his experience with collective production and public performance. The announcement does not say how those concerns will appear in the Biennial, however, or whether his appointment will bring live performance into the museum's programme.

Why pair these two?

The pairing joins a current Whitney curator, already familiar with its Biennial, with the artistic director and co-founder of a collective performance company. Onli brings experience of the museum's own biennial model and Black visual culture; Winokur brings a performing-arts collective spanning music, dance, writing and production.

The institution has not said whether their collaboration will alter the Biennial's format, invite performing artists into the galleries, or extend the programme beyond the museum. An accompanying Whitney-supplied image identifies the two curators but does not preview the exhibition.

That is the critical caveat. The curators' backgrounds make a cross-disciplinary exhibition plausible, but plausible is not programmed. It would be premature to treat AMOC* or the Black Visual Archive as either a guaranteed presence or a curatorial theme until the Whitney names artists and explains the concept.

What changes before March 2028?

For now, the hard facts remain the 83rd edition, the March 2028 opening and the two named curators. Onli's co-curatorship of the 2024 Biennial with Chrissie Iles shows that this is her second role in the museum's biennial series, while Winokur's work at AMOC*, Little Island and NYPopsUp comes from a distinct field.

The next test is straightforward. The Whitney should publish the artists, curatorial framework and precise opening date, then let the works answer the harder questions. Until then, the appointment has documented careers and a firm opening month, but a thin rationale; March 2028 will reveal whether it becomes a coherent exhibition or a prestigious gesture.