Art: Whitney & Force

In one big capsule, Manhattan's Whitney Museum last week gave gallerygoers a history of 20th Century U.S. art. With 176 paintings and sculptures by Whitney-nurtured artists, it was staging a memorial exhibit for Juliana Force, until her death last year the museum's hardworking, fast-talking director.

Teamed with socialite Sculptress Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney, Juliana Force did as much as anyone to pull contemporary U.S. art out of the side streets of Greenwich Village and points east & west, place it in galleries where the public could see and admire it. For when Gertrude Whitney...