The Weitzman School’s Michelle Lopez, an associate professor of fine arts, and alumni David L. Johnson, MFA’20, and Emilio Martinez Poppe, MFA’22, are among the artists to be exhibited in Whitney Biennial 2026. The roster of 56 participating artists, duos, and collectives was announced on December 15, 2025, following more than 300 studio visits by the curatorial team.

The 82nd edition of the Biennial, widely considered the most prestigious survey of work by living American artists, opens on March 8, 2026, and “offers a vivid atmospheric survey of contemporary American art shaped by a moment of profound transition.”

Michelle Lopez is an interdisciplinary sculptor and installation artist. Her installations bring together precarious assemblages of such materials as steel rope, pulled glass, bent wood, and street rubble, and draw from the histories of industrialization, art movements, and the built environment. Last fall, a major exhibition of Ms. Lopez’s work was mounted at the Galleries at Moore College of Art & Design. Other recent solo exhibitions were mounted at Commonwealth & Council in Los Angeles and the Institute of Contemporary Art in Philadelphia. Ms. Lopez holds a MFA from the School of Visual Arts in New York and a BA from Barnard College of Columbia University in New York. She has received a Guggenheim Fellowship and a Pew Fellowship.

In the coming year, David L. Johnson has upcoming exhibitions at Theta in New York; Galerie Thomas Schulte in Berlin, and the Storefront for Art and Architecture in New York. His work was included in recent group exhibitions at the Palais de Tokyo in Paris and the Chicago Architecture Biennial and is held in the public collection of the Studio Museum in Harlem. Mr. Johnson is an adjunct professor at the Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art.

Emilio Martínez Poppe is an artist and educator whose work is concerned with the right to the city and the struggle for public space. In 2025, Mr. Poppe’s Civic Views, a public art project celebrating Philadelphia’s municipal employees, was installed in the Philadelphia City Hall courtyard. His work has also been included in recent exhibitions at the Queens Museum, CUE Art Foundation, and Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts, all in New York. Mr. Poppe is a visiting assistant professor at the Pratt Institute.

“After more than 300 visits, we found that many of the artists we gravitated toward were exploring various forms of relationality with a particular emphasis on infrastructures,” said Drew Sawyer, co-curator of the Biennial with Marcela Guerrero.