Associate Professor of Fine Arts Michelle Lopez and alums David L. Johnson (MFA’20) and Emilio Martinez Poppe (MFA’22) are among the artists to be exhibited in Whitney Biennial 2026. The roster of 56 participating artists, duos, and collectives and collectives was announced on December 15 following more than 300 studio visits by the curatorial team.
The 82nd edition of the Biennial, widely considered the most prestigious survey of work by living American artists, opens on March 8, 2026, and “offers a vivid atmospheric survey of contemporary American art shaped by a moment of profound transition.”
Michelle Lopez is an interdisciplinary sculptor and installation artist. Her installations bring together precarious assemblages such materials as steel rope, pulled glass, bent wood, and street rubble, and draw from the histories of industrialization, art movements, and the built environment.
Earlier this fall, a major exhibition of Lopez’s work was on view at the Galleries at Moore College of Art & Design. Other recent solo exhibitions were mounted at Commonwealth & Council, Los Angeles, and the Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia. Lopez holds a Master of Fine Arts from the School of Visual Arts, New York, and a Bachelor of Arts from Barnard College, Columbia University, New York. She is a recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and a Pew Fellowship.
In the coming year, David L. Johnson has upcoming exhibitions at Theta, New York; Galerie Thomas Schulte, Berlin; and Storefront for Art and Architecture (Public Commission), New York. His work was included in recent group exhibitions at the Palais de Tokyo, Paris and Chicago Architecture Biennial, Chicago, and is held in the public collection of The Studio Museum in Harlem. Johnson is an adjunct professor at The Cooper Union.
Emilio Martínez Poppe is an artist and educator whose work is concerned with the right to the city and the struggle of public space. Earlier this year, Poppe’s Civic Views, a public art project celebrating Philadelphia’s municipal employees, was installed in the Philadelphia City Hall courtyard. Other recent exhibitions include the Queens Museum, CUE Art Foundation, and The Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts, New York. Poppe is a visiting assistant professor at the Pratt Institute
“After more than 300 visits, we found that many of the artists we gravitated toward were exploring various forms of relationality with a particular emphasis on infrastructures,” said Drew Sawyer, who curated the Biennial alongside Marcela Guerrero.
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