The Long List.

KATY SIEGEL ON THE WHITNEY BIENNIAL 

THE BIG QUESTION LEADING up to this year's Whitney Biennial was as much "how?" as "who?" With six outside curators working under a relatively new, still-controversial director, the setup seemed more than a little unwieldy. So how did this ad hoc team--Michael Auping, Valerie Cassel, Hugh Davies, Jane Farver, Andrea Miller-Keller, and Lawrence Rinder--come up with the final set of artists?

Now that the list is in, it appears that the averaging of multiple viewpoints in what has proven one of the largest Whitney Biennials to date was more diversifying than homogenizing. Still, while the curators and Maxwell Anderson have described the friction of the process, they've also emphasized the broad, summary nature of the end result. It may turn out that the biennial is the stepchild of the Whitney's "American Century" survey, widely criticized for its lack of a coherent mission.

One imperative that did emerge for the biennial curators was to show the younger artists for whom this is a big, big deal. Naming the few veterans had to be a stickier decision, with bigger egos and history at stake; among those chosen were John Coplans, Hans Haacke, and Richard Tuttle. The midcareer picks--say, Robert Gober or Annette Lemieux--will be unlikely to cause much controversy.

The final list demonstrates that geography was an important consideration as well, and the curators inevitably brought their local color to the table. California (Ingrid Calame, Linda Besemer) will certainly be well represented with Davies and Rinder casting their votes, and Cassel will deliver the Chicagoans (Dawoud Bey). Texas exes should also feel a glow: With Fort Worth and Auping favorite Vernon Fisher leading the charge, younger artists will follow from the Houston--San Antonio corral. As always, New York will weigh in (Ghada Amer, John Currin), but this year's installment does seem more attuned to the work of artists residing beyond the five boroughs.

So, what will we call the 2000 biennial? We've had the identity biennial (Thelma Golden's 1993 version) and the beauty biennial (Klaus Kertess in '95) already this decade. Auping hazards a guess: "the electronic biennial," so named for the large helping of video (Doug Aitken and Shirin Neshat) and computer work--"a lot of stuff that plugs in." Cassel predicts "Max's biennial," his public trial by fire. Anderson himself hopefully offers "the artists' biennial," but it's safe to say that this will be, in some sense, "the public biennial." The new director is determinedly oriented to the general audience rather than the art world, and the installation will probably reflect that, focusing on media rather than themes. It's also safe to say that there will be more didactic material than in previous biennials, with the notable addition of an audio guide.

Whatever the final verdict, this millennial biennial is only a first draft, for both Anderson and the history of recent art.

KATY SIEGEL is assistant professor of contemporary art history and criticism at Hunter College, CUNY, and a frequent contributor to Artforum. The editor of a forthcoming anthology of critic Sidney Tillim's writings (G + B Arts International), she is currently at work on Breakthrough, a book about the changing sense of time in postwar American art and culture. This month, Siegel offers a review of the 1999 Carnegie International and a consideration of Jennifer Bolande's Appliance House, 1999.