Whitney Museum of American Art

This guide to the Whitney Museum of American Art traces back to 1929, when heiress and sculptor Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney offered the Metropolitan Museum her collection of over five hundred American artworks, along with the money to house them. It follows what the Met's refusal set in motion, and the Greenwich Village studio she had already opened for artists no one else would show. The building itself sits between the High Line and the Hudson River.