The origins of the Whitney Museum of American Art grew out of sculptor Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney's advocacy of living American artists. At the beginning of the twentieth century when artists with new ideas found it nearly impossible to exhibit their art in the United States, Mrs. Whitney began purchasing and showing their work in her former studio on Eighth Street in New York.
The records from the Whitney Studio and later the Whitney Galleries reside in the archives of the Whitney Museum of American Art Library. These early records shed light on identifying the artists of that period who represented the changing taste of the art buying and viewing public.
