NEW YORK.- Until May 15, 2005, the Whitney Museum of American Art presents the debut of a major print portfolio by Ellen Gallagher. In this group of sixty works, Gallagher explores notions of transformation and challenges our conventional assumptions about beauty and color, and about printmaking itself. In DeLuxe Gallagher continues to entice the viewer into dialogues that investigate and reinvigorate our contemporary ideas about race, identity, and historical traditions.

Gallagher’s imagery is inspired in part by looking back at African-American history and traditions, pre-Civil Rights Act: the advertisements and content of magazines published for a Black readership (Our World, Sepia, Ebony); the ads for hair and beauty products designed to “lighten” and “transform;" the Tuskegee experiments; the nursing professional; the minstrel tradition and the advent of the use of blackface by Blacks; and the literature of authors for whom these magazines were the only public outlet.

Ellen Gallagher (b. 1965) lives and works in New York City and in Rotterdam, The Netherlands. In 1995 she received wide recognition through her inclusion in the Whitney Biennial, curated by Klaus Kertess, and Inside the Visible at the ICA Boston, curated by Catherine de Zegher. The following year she had two major solo shows, at Mary Boone Gallery in New York, and at Anthony d'Offay in London.

Ellen Gallagher : DeLuxe, organized by David Kiehl, the Whitney’s curator of special collections, is on view in the Anne & Joel Ehrenkranz Lobby Gallery on the Museum’s main floor. The portfolio of sixty prints is printed and published by Two Palms Press, New York. Support for this exhibition was provided by Jane Dresner Sadaka and Ned Sadaka.