On the occasion of 'David Hammons and Jannis Kounellis' at White Cube New York, Adrienne Edwards, Julie Mehretu and Stanley Whitney will take part in a panel discussion moderated by Kit Hammonds, engaging with the legacies of Arte Povera and artistic collaboration across time, space and material.
Thursday 4 June 2026
5.45pm – Doors open
6.15pm – Talk begins promptly (RSVP Below)
Q&A to follow
7.30pm – Cocktail Reception
Adrienne Edwards is Engell Speyer Family Curator and Director of Curatorial Affairs at the Whitney Museum of American Art. Edwards’ experience as a curator and director comprises nearly 50 interdisciplinary performance commissions, as well as numerous curatorial projects at museums such as ICA Boston, Walker Art Center and the Whitney Museum of American Art. As a writer, Edwards has authored and contributed to several publications, including a 2019 monograph on Julie Mehretu’s work, which earned recognition as one of The New York Times' Best Art Books of the year.
Julie Mehretu is a world renowned painter, born in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia in 1970 who lives and works in New York City and Berlin. She received a Master’s of Fine Art with honors from The Rhode Island School of Design in 1997. Mehretu is a recipient of many awards, including the The MacArthur Award (2005) and the US Department of State Medal of Arts Award (2015). She has shown her work extensively in international and national solo and group exhibitions and is represented in public and private collections around the world. Recent projects include completing two large-scale paintings for the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art’s Evelyn and Walter Haas, Jr. Atrium in September 2017, entitled HOWL eon (I, II). Recent exhibitions include Venice Biennale (2019) and a mid-career survey at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, which travels to The Whitney Museum of American Art in New York (2020), High Museum in Atlanta (2020), and The Walker Art Center in Minneapolis (2021).
Stanley Whitney is an artist who lives and works in Bridgehampton, NY, and Parma, Italy. Whitney's work is held in the collections of many prominent museums, including those of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City, the Pérez Art Museum Miami, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Buffalo AKG Art Museum, the Studio Museum in Harlem in New York, and the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York. In 2024, the Buffalo AKG Art Museum presented a major retrospective survey of Whitney's career, which traveled to the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, and the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston.Kit Hammonds is Chief Curator of the Museo Jumex, Mexico City, where he leads the artistic, public programmes, education and publications. He has previously held positions as Senior Tutor in Curating Contemporary Art at the Royal College of Art and was a former Curator at the South London Gallery. From 2015-2017 he was a Taiwan Fellow and Visiting Professor in Curating in Taipei.
RSVP is required for the talk at the Ukrainian Institute; guests are welcome to visit 'David Hammons and Jannis Kounellis' at White Cube New York (1002 Madison Avenue, New York, NY) until 6.30pm.
