The recipient of the MacArthur Foundation Fellowship Award in 2007, Whitfield Lovell has been the subject of numerous exhibitions, most recently Inbox: Whitfield Lovell at the Museum of Modern Art in 2017, Whitfield Lovell: Kin Series & Related Works at the Phillips Collection in Washington, DC in 2016-17. The presentation was accompanied by a major monograph, Whitfield Lovell: Kin, published by Rizzoli.

In 2023-2025 the American Federation of the Arts will be traveling a major museum exhibition Whitfield Lovell: Passages. Lovell’s work is part of many public collections including the Brooklyn Museum, NY; High Museum of Art, Atlanta GA; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY; National Gallery of Art, Washington DC; Phillips Collection, DC; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY; Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, Washington, DC; Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art, PA; Seattle Art Museum, WA; Studio Museum of Harlem, NY; New Orleans Museum of Art; LA, and many others.

The Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh, the Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art in Winston-Salem, North Carolina and the Jersey City Museum have presented solo shows of Whitfield’s work. He is represented by D.C.Moore Gallery in NYC. He has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Joan Mitchell, Penny McCall, and the New York Foundation for the Arts.