Biennial Buys 
The Whitney Museum of American Art has made a tradition of buying a selection of works it features in its Biennials. Curators compile lists of works they would like the museum to buy and then make proposals to the appropriate committees, made up of trustees and others who help raise the money and make the final decisions. This year the museum has bought works by 20 Biennial artists. "It's a varied list," said Lawrence Rinder, the new curator of contemporary art. "Half are by artists who have not been represented in the Whitney's collection before." Mr. Rinder stressed the importance of adding Biennial artists to the museum's collection. "Great works by key American artists are an important legacy to continue," he said. Among the artists entering the museum's collection for the first time are Dara Friedman, whose "Bim Barn" consists of two films, 
one shown directly above the other, projecting sideways images of a woman repeatedly opening and closing a door; Doug Aitken, whose "Electric Earth," a video piece in-stalled in a maze of rooms, won a prize at last summer's Venice Bienniale ; Silvia Kolbowski, whose "In-adequate History of Conceptual Art" is a video and sound installation; igo Manglano-Ovalle's video installa-tion "The Kiss," which shows the artist washing a glass wall of Mies van der Rohe's Farnsworth House; and E.V. Day's exploded evening dress, "Bombshell."