Blake Gopnik attempts the Whitney Biennale with a positive attitude: “If art lovers are almost always disappointed by the Whitney’s survey, maybe the problem lies in our expectations rather than in the show itself. Though it features more than 300 works chosen from across the nation in something like nine months, we still somehow imagine that the biennial should be a tight, coherent show of excellent art. In fact, it can never be more than a grab bag of whatever work happens to have been made since the previous edition of the show. Great exhibitions come about when curators identify important art that speaks to them, and then spend many years shaping it into a show that will speak to us. The Whitney Biennial comes about because another two years have gone by and someone’s got to pull something together, fast.”