Installation view of A Needle Walks into a Haystack at the Bluecoat, 2014. Photograph by Mark McNulty

A guided tour of the exhibition with Simone Mair, Assistant Curator at Liverpool Biennial.

Outspoken and argumentative, dressed in his black patent shoes and with a white plume of hair coiffured amongst black waves, the painter James McNeill Whistler (US, 1834–1903) cultivated a charismatic public persona who challenged the art community and elicited the mocking attention of the popular press.