The Whitney Museum of American Art has named curator Meg Onli and stage director Zack Winokur to co-curate its 2028 Biennial, which is scheduled to open in March. Their appointment pairs a museum curator with an artist whose work spans performance and visual art for the exhibition’s 83rd edition.
A curator and a stage director
Onli is the Whitney’s Nancy and Fred Poses Curator. She joined the museum as a curator-at-large in 2023 and became a curator in 2024. She co-organized the 2024 Biennial with Whitney curator Chrissie Iles, and is currently co-curating the museum’s Roy Lichtenstein retrospective, which runs until 10 May 2027.
Winokur works across dance, music, visual art, opera and theatre. He co-founded AMOC* (American Modern Opera Company) and serves as its artistic director. His projects for stage and screen include directing productions at Opera Philadelphia and the Santa Fe Opera, and work on the expanded version of The Wizard of Oz showing at Sphere in Las Vegas.
Why the pairing matters
The Whitney’s announcement puts the two leaders’ different practices at the centre of the next exhibition. Museum director Scott Rothkopf described Onli as a curator able to champion artists and bring fresh perspectives to American art history. He praised Winokur’s programming across opera, theatre, dance and visual art, and said their collaboration could bring a new vision to the Biennial.
Onli said the Biennial’s history of reinvention would inform her conversations with Winokur and participating artists. Winokur, in turn, described their shared interest in the relationship between objects and people, and said he was drawn to the chance to support other artists through the exhibition.
A recurring exhibition with a contentious past
The Biennial has changed format over time. It began as a series of exhibitions focused on particular media, became the Whitney Annual in 1937 and shifted to an every-other-year schedule in 1973. The 2028 show will be its 83rd edition.
Recent editions have drawn sharply different responses. The 2017 Biennial became the focus of protests and arguments over Dana Schutz’s painting Open Casket, depicting Emmett Till in an open casket. In 2019, protests and threatened artist withdrawals centred on Warren Kanders, then the Whitney’s vice chairman, and his connection to Safariland, a company that manufactured tear-gas canisters.
The 2026 Biennial, organised by Whitney curators Marcela Guerrero and Drew Sawyer, closed in October after attracting more than 550,000 visitors, the museum’s figures show. Around 75% identified as Millennials or Gen Z, making it the youngest audience since the museum began tracking visitors’ ages. That edition was described as largely free of the controversies that have marked earlier shows.
What comes next
Onli and Winokur will now develop the exhibition ahead of its planned March 2028 opening. Their statements point to artist conversations as part of that process, but the museum has not announced participating artists or further exhibition details. The next concrete milestone is the Biennial’s scheduled opening in March 2028.
Sources
- theartnewspaper.com — “Whitney Museum selects a staff curator and a stage director to lead 2028 biennial – The Art Newspaper – International art news and events”
- artnews.com — “2028 Whitney Biennial to Be Curated by Meg Onli and Zack Winokur”
- whitneymedia.org — “MEG ONLI AND ZACK WINOKUR TO CURATE 2028”
- artforum.com — “Whitney Names Curatorial Team for 2028 Biennial”
- Whitney Museum of American Art — “Whitney Biennial 2026”
Topic guide: Exhibitions: The Complete Guide