Role: Curatorial Assistant

Jennifer Packer’s paintings and drawings combine observation, memory, and improvisation. Featuring over thirty works from the past decade, The Eye Is Not Satisfied With Seeing is the largest survey of Packer’s practice to date. Her intimate renderings of friends, family, and flowers evoke the art historical genres of portraiture and still life, while also highlighting the politics of representation.

Her paintings, most recently seen at the Whitney in the 2019 Biennial, slide between the fidelity of depiction and the freedom of abstraction. This avowal of both clarity and opacity endows her paintings with the same complexity she sees in the Black sitters that populate her art—and the world. “My inclination to paint,” Packer has said, “especially from life, is a completely political one. We belong here. We deserve to be seen and acknowledged in real time. We deserve to be heard and to be imaged with shameless generosity and accuracy.”

Jennifer Packer: The Eye Is Not Satisfied With Seeing was initiated by Serpentine and curated by Melissa Blanchflower, Curator, Exhibitions and Public Art with Natalia Grabowska, Assistant Curator. The presentation at the Whitney is organized by Rujeko Hockley, Arnhold Associate Curator, and Jane Panetta, Nancy and Fred Poses Curator and Director of the Collection, with Ambika Trasi, Curatorial Assistant.

The lead sponsor for Jennifer Packer: The Eye Is Not Satisfied with Seeing is the Jerome L. Greene Foundation.

This exhibition is also sponsored by Northern Trust. Generous support is provided by Judy Hart Angelo. Significant support is provided by Candy and Michael Barasch, Further Forward Foundation, and Dawn and David Lenhardt.  Additional support is provided by Bernard I. Lumpkin and Carmine D. Boccuzzi and Jackson Tang. 

Image: Installation view of Jennifer Packer: The Eye Is Not Satisfied With Seeing (Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, October 30, 2021-April 17, 2022). From left to right: Jess, 2018; Exile of the Body, 2018; A Lesson in Longing, 2019; Untitled, 2016. Photograph by Filip Wolak

Public Program

Explore Jennifer Packer: The Eye Is Not Satisfied with Seeing with Jane Panetta, Curator and Director of the Collection, and Curatorial Assistant Ambika Trasi. Featuring over thirty works from the past decade, The Eye Is Not Satisfied with Seeing is the largest survey of Packer’s practice to date. Her intimate renderings of friends, family, and flowers evoke the art historical genres of portraiture and still life, while also highlighting the politics of representation. Panetta and Trasi provide an overview of the exhibition and then take questions from the audience.