Is it possible to write about an exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art without commenting on the institution itself? If lamenting the dismal state of affairs at the Whitney has become tiresome, it is no less so than that which the museum routinely proffers as art. What is surprising, then, about “Kienholz: A Retrospective” is not that it almost didn’t happen, but that it didn’t happen sooner.[1] Although he had been working for over forty years, Edward Kienholz—who died in 1994 at the age of sixty-six—could be considered the quintessential artist for the Whitney of the 1990s, a museum partial to (as a colleague has it) “the school of puke, pus, piss, and politics.” This is an unfortunate turn of phrase but one that sums up the Whitney’s criteria for art all too well. It sums up “Kienholz: A Retrospective” pretty well too.

The title of the exhibition refers not only to Edward K ...

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