Whitney taps Meg Onli and Zack Winokur for 2028 Biennial

By Daniel Okafor

The Whitney Museum of American Art has selected staff curator Meg Onli and choreographer and stage director Zack Winokur to curate its 83rd Whitney Biennial, which opens in March 2028. The appointment joins a museum curator with a director whose practice crosses dance, music, visual art, opera and theatre.

What does the 2028 selection change?

Scott Rothkopf, the Whitney’s director, said: “Every Whitney Biennial springs from a distinct curatorial alchemy.” He called Onli “one of the most compelling curatorial voices working today” and praised her ability to champion artists and bring fresh perspectives to American art history.

He also described Winokur as “an equally inventive artistic programmer” and “one of the leading voices of his generation,” with work across opera, theatre, dance and visual art.

“Their partnership promises a radical new vision for the 2028 Biennial,” he said. That is a promise, not a programme: no artists, works, thematic priorities, opening-day details or venue plans accompany the announcement.

Onli joined the museum as curator-at-large in 2023 and became a curator in 2024. She co-curated the 2024 Whitney Biennial, Even Better Than the Real Thing, with fellow curator Chrissie Iles, and most recently co-curated the museum’s current Roy Lichtenstein retrospective, which remains through 10 May 2027.

Onli said the series’ history of reinvention, from the Whitney’s early Annuals onward, already gives her much to think about. She wants to explore what the Biennial can become with Winokur and where conversations with artists lead. The statement offers direction rather than decisions.

Why does Winokur’s stage work matter?

Winokur works across dance, music, visual art, opera and theatre. He co-founded and serves as artistic director of AMOC (American Modern Opera Company), which staged a five-week takeover of Lincoln Center’s campus on Manhattan’s Upper West Side the previous year.

He previously served as artistic director of Little Island, the park and cultural event space that Heatherwick Studio and MNLA designed and that rises out of the Hudson River near the Whitney. His projects include directing productions at Opera Philadelphia and Santa Fe Opera, plus work on the expanded The Wizard of Oz now showing at Sphere in Las Vegas.

Winokur said: “I’m honoured to be curating the Whitney Biennial with Meg. Our shared desire to centre objects and people and the collision between them already echoes our collaboration.” He added that being “in service to other artists” excites him most as an artist. The vocabulary is suggestive, but no roster, performance plan or curatorial brief accompanies the announcement.

What does the 2026 audience reveal?

Staff curators Marcela Guerrero and Drew Sawyer organised the 2026 Whitney Biennial, which closed in October. Museum figures show it drew more than 550,000 visitors, around 75% of whom identified as either Millennials or Gen Z. That made it the youngest audience since the Whitney began tracking visitors’ ages. The 2028 edition arrives two years after the 2026 show, preserving the same every-other-year cadence, though its public curatorial detail remains limited.

The 2026 edition also attracted remarkably little controversy, even though the Biennial often becomes a focus for debates, protests and political statements. One quiet edition cannot establish lasting tolerance; it establishes only that this cycle avoided the flashpoints that defined earlier shows.

Why do the 2017 and 2019 editions still matter?

Jane Panetta and Rujeko Hockley led the 2019 edition, which became known as the “tear gas biennial” after weekly protests and participating artists threatened to withdraw over then-vice chairman Warren Kanders.

Kanders was chief executive of Safariland, a defence and security contractor that manufactured tear-gas canisters that had been deployed against asylum-seekers at the Mexico–US border, among other materials. He later resigned from the Whitney board and is chairman and chief executive of Florida-based Cadre Holdings, a maker of security and law-enforcement equipment.

Co-curated by Christopher Y. Lew and Mia Locks, the 2017 Whitney Biennial was overshadowed by debate over Dana Schutz’s Open Casket (2016). The painting portrayed the famous 1955 image of 14-year-old Emmett Till lying in an open casket after his brutal abduction, mutilation and murder.

Hannah Black’s open letter criticised the work’s inclusion and called for its destruction. Protests followed inside and outside the museum, alongside arguments over censorship, identity and cultural appropriation.

What history is the 83rd edition inheriting?

The 2028 exhibition will be the 83rd edition of a series that began with medium-specific exhibitions, became the Whitney Annual in 1937 and shifted to an every-other-year schedule in 1973. It remains the most closely watched recurring exhibition of contemporary art in the Americas.

Winokur’s background points towards a 2028 edition that joins museum display with live performance. Whether that becomes the “radical new vision” Rothkopf promises will depend on the artists, works and curatorial arguments still absent from the announcement.