David Whitney was an American art critic, gallerist, and curator, who was also close friends with Andy Warhol. He established his own gallery in 1969, and worked on exhibits at major institutions such as the Whitney museum in New York City. He was the life partner to architect Phillip Johnson; he and Johnson both passed away in 2005.
In 1972, Andy Warhol was commissioned to create his Sunset series by architects Johnson/Burgee (a partnership between Phillip Johnson and John Burgee) for Hotel Marquette in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Warhol and his assistants created over 600 Sunset prints, 472 of which were then hung inside the hotel bedrooms. Years later, in 1981, the prints were taken down, signed and numbered by Warhol, and published by David Whitney in New York. The prints were stamped and labeled “Hotel Marquette Prints” and numbered 1-470, with no two prints in the series being identical.
