The Whitney Biennial, the most closely watched survey of contemporary American art, has returned to the museum's downtown home with a sprawling and deliberately argumentative edition. As ever, it aims less to please than to provoke a conversation about where art is heading.

This year's show gathers dozens of artists working across painting, video, sound, and installation, many of them little known outside their cities. The fictional sculptor Rosa Delgado's room-filling work has emerged as an early talking point among critics.

The Biennial's mixed reception is part of the ritual; it is meant to be debated. What it reliably delivers is a snapshot of the anxieties and obsessions animating American artists at a particular moment — messy, uneven, and impossible to ignore.