How to See Jack Whitten

Has an artwork ever left you frozen in wonder? Meet Jack Whitten, the shape-shifting artist and innovator who pushed the boundaries of abstraction by imbuing his materials with history, politics, and emotion.

This short film offers a rare glimpse into Whitten’s studio in Queens, New York, a former firehouse he turned into a laboratory for acrylic paint, which remains largely untouched since his passing in 2018. The studio was also a research space for his groundbreaking creative process. Whitten made his tools and art materials by hand, constantly inventing new approaches to art-making—from blur paintings that appear almost photographic to large-scale mosaics, resembling constellations of stars, that he cut from hardened sheets of acrylic paint.

You will also follow the MoMA conservators who conducted the first major study into the mystery behind Whitten’s process and inventions. And you’ll hear Whitten’s wife and daughter explain how the collection of historical imagery and objects he surrounded himself with gives us a view “inside his brain” and reflects his experiences growing up in the segregated South during the Civil Rights movement. In the words of MoMA’s chief curator at large, Michelle Kuo, “Whitten transformed righteous anger into a kind of dazzling beauty.”

This film celebrates Whitten’s lasting impact, revealing how art can be a “conduit of the spirit” that, despite our differences, connects us through time and space. While Whitten mined the soul and essence of a people in a historic struggle for liberation, this documentary aims to honor and preserve his own.

Jack Whitten: The Messenger is on view at MoMA March 23–August 2, 2025.