Robert Whitman

Untitled, from The New York Collection for Stockholm

1979

Robert Whitman (May 23, 1935 – January 19, 2024) was an American artist renowned for his innovative theater pieces in the early 1960s, blending visual and sound images, actors, film, slides, and evocative props. From the late 1960s onward, he embraced new technologies, incorporating cellphones in his latest work. His long collaboration with optics scientist John Forkner began in 1971 with a mirror, light, and sound installation for the Art and Technology exhibition at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Together, they developed an optical system creating floating real images that appeared and disappeared in an array of 6-inch corner reflectors. Whitman co-founded Experiments in Art and Technology (E.A.T.) with engineers Billy Klüver and Fred Waldhauer and artist Robert Rauschenberg, providing artists access to emerging technologies. He was a core artist for the Pepsi Pavilion at Expo '70 in Osaka, Japan, featuring a 90 ft diameter spherical mirror producing real images of visitors hanging upside down. Whitman's significant solo exhibitions include shows at The Museum of Modern Art in New York, The Hudson River Museum, and Thielska Galleriet in Stockholm. He also had solo gallery exhibitions at PaceWildenstein in New York and participated in numerous group exhibitions.