The Collection exhibits that marks the arrival of a new millennium at the Whitney Museum of American Art, primarily includes pieces of installation art and contemporary photographs. The Whitney Museum of American Art, also recognized as the fortress of American Art, offers the public the opportunity to witness the history of art in America for the last one hundred years. The museum's collection is a reflection of their commitment to exhibit the Whitney's dedication to art in modern-day America.
The museum's founder Gertrude V. Whitney, a patron of the arts; was well-regarded sculptor as well as a serious art collector. Originally created the "Whitney Studio Club," a New York-based exhibition created in 1918 to promote the works of avant-garde and unrecognized American artists. After collecting almost 700 works of American Artists, she offered then as a donation to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1929. The refusal of the Metropolitan Museum to accept her donation, the favoritism for European modernism due to the opening of the Museum of Modern Art, led Whitney to open her own museum, which would be destiny to exhibit American Art, in 1931. The museum was originally located by West Eighth Street. In 1950 moved it location to a small structure behind the Museum of Modern Art. To finally settled in 1966 at the southeast corner of Madison Avenue at 75th Street in Manhattan's Upper East Side. The present building, was built by Marcel Breuer and Hamilton P. Smith with a distinctively modern style, is easily distinguished from the neighbors by its staircase façade made from granite stones and its external upside-down windows.
The examples from the Whitney collection for the year 2000 have several elements in common; they are simple, realistic and unassuming in essence. These contemporary artists did not observe any specific standards or a criterion's to create these pieces, which are related to the Remodernism movement that revives features of modernism, in its early form, and follows it's contrasting postmodernism. The examples are representations in which all these artists imagine and create their own style. They include components of way of life, the incorporation of video throughout installation art, contemporary photographs and the abstract portrait of a galaxy. Also characterizing these examples is the eclecticism in materials and imagery, combinations of painting in single works, and realistic photographs. This reflects a resurgence of realism, and very little use of other periods and works of art. In these examples the artists created their own form of art; they embraced total freedom of expression by abandoning the traditional standards, to integrate the past with their art and their desire to celebrate the present in anticipation of the future.
The photographic modernisms, with integration of video have a great representation in the contemporary video artist Omer Faust, in his Two-channel video installation with surround sound. In Whitfield Lovell's, Shine, charcoal on wood and found objects, the simplicity of the designs in the art are incredible, he takes us to the past with his installation art of today's days. Pat Steir, representation of a galaxy, he named his artwork Milky Way, in this piece he represents the typical contrast of art at the time appears cold and dark, but at same time full of light, several traces of black color, remains us of the mystery of the infinite, stellar lights that pulsate with energy.
Aitken, who is known primarily for his multi-screen video installations, in this exhibition presents a photography of an abandoned shopping cart in a deserted parking lot in the middle of the night, although the picture is in the middle of the night, it is illuminated and presents the same spatial and disruption from the big city. This is a unique way of portraying the reality of life in society in the big city, many people living in big orbs but surrounding by isolation. Viki Muniz, are the clear reflection of the geometric structures of then-current Minimalism, using as main components, the dust collected over several months by the maintenance staff at the Whitney Museum, those elements were used for drawings based on installation photographs of the museum's collection of Minimal and Post-minimal sculpture. Ironically, dust is usually the nemesis of the pristine photographic print and polished sculptural surface. The photographs are in color but with this sort of visual trickery Muniz subvert photography by employing it to reveal its own unreliability. Coplans with his black and white self-portraits of his aging hands man is mere representation of the celebration of his present in anticipation of his future.
Many in the artistic community believe that the era of the culmination of arts evolution. The photorealistic will continue to dominate this era as well as the installation art will continue developing with performance art incorporating such elements as instrumental or electronic music, song, dance, television, film, sculpture, or spoken dialogue. Contemporary artists will continue to override the standards or criteria for their art and to separate from traditional boundaries with their work.

References:

1) Whitney Museum of American Art, retrieved on 03/02/2011 from:

http://whitney.org/

2) American Art, retrieved on 03/02/2011 from:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_art#After_Abstract_Expressionism

3) Art Periods, retrieved on 03/02/2011 from:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Art_periods#Contemporary_art

4) Remodernism, retrieve on 03/02/2011 from:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remodernism

I must leave now but this can help you w/ the Renaissance question:

Italy in the With century, particularly in Florence, produced a new attitude towards the world. The
Renaissance (rebirth) was the product of men who saw the Middle Ages as a dark times and believed they
were resuming a civilization like that of the Greco-Romans. We must realize that the languages and
nationalities, the institutions of laws government and the economy all originated in the Middle Ages.
However, the Renaissance did mark a new era in thought and feeling, particularly in the areas of literature and
the arts: "They involved the whole area of culture which is neither theological nor scientific but concerns
essentially moral and civic questions, asking what man ought to be or ought to do, and is reflected in matters
of taste, style, propriety, decorum, personal character, and education....it was in Renaissance Italy that an
almost purely secular attitude first appeared....".
B. The Italian Cities and the New Conception of Man
1. Italian towns boomed with trade; merchants made fortunes in commerce and became bankers; they
bought the wares of craftsmen-artists. People rejoiced Kin the beautiful things and psychological
satisfactions that money could buy." Towns were independent city-states controlled by merchant
oligarchies. Some, like Milan, were under local despots; others, like Venice, Genoa, and Florence, governed
themselves as republics.
2. Florence was only moderately large, but it produced an extraordinary series of brilliant men between
1350 (Dante, Petrarch, Boccaccio) and 1527 (Machiavelli). Florence was run by the Medici family, first
unofficially and later as Grand Dukes. The family began in wool trade, became bankers and then used their
wealth to rule--reaching full power under Lorenzo the Magnificent (1449-1492).
3. What was produced in Italy was a new conception of man. Instead of seeing man as a frail creature, in
need of redemption and full of renunciation of the physical world, a new type of scholar called humanists
praised the full life in this world. Renaissance individualism put its emphasis on outstanding attainments.
The great individual shaped his own world and excelled in all things. New forms of painting, sculpture, and
architecture arose, focusing on this world. Space was no longer indeterminable or unknowable, but a zone
occupied by physical human beings; it was the artists' function to convey this reality. Buildings had to
reflect the classical principle of design--symmetry and balance, with the classical column, arch, and dome;
they should be set to human scale, not to dwarf man into insignificance like the cathedrals. Sculpture
likewise returned to the classical conception of man. Painting continued to reflect religious values, but the
subjects had a new humanity and were set into a real, three-dimensional worl