Whitney Biennial 2026 and Hyundai Terrace Commission: Kelly Akashi

In March 2026, Whitney Biennial 2026 and Hyundai Terrace Commission: Kelly Akashi opened at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York. Together, they reflect Hyundai Motor Company’s long-term commitment to supporting artistic experimentation and opening up discussions for audiences worldwide. A Long-Term Partnership In 2024, Hyundai Motor and the Whitney Museum announced a 10-year partnership that enables artists to test their aspirations and expand their practice. This is one of the longest and most expansive global corporate partnerships to date for the museum. Founded in 1930, the Whitney Museum has long championed emerging voices in contemporary art and introduced them to wider audiences. This partnership builds on that legacy, presenting the most relevant art and ideas of our time and sparking dialogue with audiences worldwide. As presenting partner, Hyundai Motor supports both the Hyundai Terrace Commission—an annual, site-specific installation on the museum’s fifth-floor terrace—and the Whitney Biennial. In Biennial years, the Hyundai Terrace Commission becomes part of the broader Biennial exhibition, extending its reach and resonance. The Whitney Biennial: A Landmark Platform for Contemporary American Art This is the museum’s landmark exhibition, showcasing contemporary artists across media and disciplines, and reflecting evolving perspectives on American art. First established in 1932 by founder Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney, the Whitney Biennial is the longest-running survey of American art, bringing together leading and emerging artists every two years to reflect on the issues shaping our time. The earliest Biennials began as annual exhibitions in the 1930s, before evolving into the current Biennial format. While its form has changed over time, its purpose remains the same as when it began: to shine a light on the most compelling artists of each moment. More than 3,600 artists have participated to date, making the Biennial the most groundbreaking presentation of the leading contemporary American art. Whitney Biennial 2026 The Whitney Biennial has long served as a platform for ideas that may feel challenging or ahead of their time, creating space for dialogue that often extends well beyond the exhibition itself. This year’s Whitney Biennial 2026 marks the second edition since the 10 year partnership between Hyundai Motor and the Whitney Museum was established in 2024. This 82nd edition brings together 56 artists, duos and collectives responding to a world in transition. The works explore how we relate to one another and to the systems around us, from family and community to environment and technology, as well as the infrastructures that shape everyday life. Rather than offering clear answers, the exhibition focuses on atmosphere and experience. Visitors are invited into spaces that feel at times tense, intimate, unexpected, and even humorous, opening up new ways of imagining how we live together. Hyundai Terrace Commission The newly imagined outdoor exhibition project, the Hyundai Terrace Commission, offers an innovative platform for artists to experiment at scale and to engage the museum’s fifth-floor terrace as an interface between art, architecture, the built environment, and the surrounding city. Conceived by Renzo Piano, the architect behind the Whitney building in New York City’s Meatpacking District, and originally known as the ‘Test Platform’, the museum’s largest outdoor gallery is a flexible and dynamic space for large-scale and monumental installations. In doing so, it supports ambitious, site-specific works that might not otherwise be possible. The Artist: Kelly Akashi Kelly Akashi (b. 1983, Los Angeles), the artist of this year’s Hyundai Terrace Commission, is a sculptor whose work explores impermanence, time, and the traces we leave behind. Working across glass, bronze, stone, and cast materials, she often returns to the hand as a central motif. Her sculptures—from delicate glass flowers to towering weeds and cast hands, bodies, and extinct shells—reflect on temporality with a quiet, grounded sensitivity. The Works on View In this exhibition, Kelly Akashi presents a new sculptural installation, a steel relief, works on paper, and an outdoor-screen animation across the Whitney’s fifth-floor terrace and adjacent spaces. These works are shaped in part by her experience in the aftermath of the Eaton Fire in January 2025. Anchoring the presentation is Monument (Altadena) (2026), a chimney and pathway installation that takes shape as both reconstruction and memorial. After Akashi’s home and studio burned in the fire, the chimney was the only structure left standing. For the Hyundai Terrace Commission, the artist has worked with a mason to rebuild it piece by piece, alongside a reconstruction of her home’s pathway in cast glass brick. Installed on the terrace, the work transforms the Whitney Museum’s outdoor gallery into a site of witness and reflection on survival, rupture, and what remains. Also on the terrace, Inheritance (Distressed) (2026) is installed on the bulkhead south of Monument (Altadena). The work draws from a personal archive, Akashi’s grandmother’s doilies, which the artist rescued from a family garage sale and later lost in the same fire. Inside the museum, Imprints (2026) comprises five framed works on paper. On the terrace’s outdoor screen, Remnants (Constellations) (2026) extends the presentation into moving image. [Kelly Akashi] produced a monumental work that stands as a resolute testament to remembrance and the legacies that shape our collective and individual histories. – Marcela Guerrero, DeMartini Family Curator at the Whitney Museum of American Art.