Colloquially dubbed the “multicultural biennial” and maligned by mainstream critics for “preachy” politics, the 1993 Whitney Biennial was a historic juncture in contemporary art history. Films on view explored queerness and civil rights activism, and visitors became immediate, unwitting performers by way of Daniel J. Martinez’s artwork comprised of multicolored admissions buttons: metal pins worn as proof of entry, each containing a fragment of the phrase “I Can’t Imagine Ever Wanting To Be White.” It was a landmark display; the curators prioritized media-based works, and the selected artists engaged equally with formalist techniques and political theory. Today, it is lauded as a great success of institutional evolution and the avant-garde: reflections by its head curator, Elisabeth Sussman, were published in 2005 and 2016, and its resonance was celebrated with a symposium and multi-city exhibition by Hauser & Wirth in 2023. The universe in which the exhibition was raised is the same one inhabited by the characters of Stephanie Wambugu’s 2025 novel, Lonely Crowds. Set in the 1990s art scene, the ambitious debut grapples with themes of existentialism, cultural alienation, and suicidality with subtle wit and modernist prose.