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MUSEUMS

The Whitney Biennial's curious curator

There is no major museum in this country so frequently berated as the Whitney Museum of American Art. Shows like the David Salle survey, and the museum's biennial exhibitions of up-to-the-very-minute art— the 1987 Biennial opens this month—leave many museum visitors cold and cranky. If they knew whom to address their complaints to...they'd know Lisa Phillips.

Phillips, thirty-two, is an associate curator at the Whitney. More to the point, she wrote a catalogue essay for the Salle show, is responsible for the show of Cindy Sherman's photographs that will open this summer (and cause its share of grumpy bewilderment), and, with three colleagues, organized this year's Biennial. She works at the very edge of art history, which means you're more likely to find her at Mary Boone (or, later, at Nell's) than at a library study carrel. Looking and listening, she's come to know more about the art of this moment than any other curator in the big museums of New York.

She hears but is not deterred by the criticism the museum gets—' ' If you read the reviews over the years, you realize it has always been this way with newer art." If anything, Phillips believes it is more important now than ever that museums exhibit what is new; too many people are seeing contemporary art through a dense fog of cash and cant.

From her bag Phillips produces transparencies of three new Julian Schnabel paintings, two of which are in the Biennial. Ten years ago, when Schnabel was first getting noticed, Phillips saw little in his work. But she kept looking. This fall, there will be a Schnabel show at the Whitney. And who do you think is behind that? Whitney Museum. New York. (4110-6128)

GERALD MARZORATI