Her work, exhibited for more than thirty-four years, is held in the permanent collections of numerous institutions, including the Philadelphia Museum of Art; the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; and the WestLicht Schauplatz für Fotografie, Vienna. From 2008 to 2013, her exhibit The Theater of Insects toured museums, including the National Academy of Sciences, Washington, DC, and the Museum of Photographic Arts, San Diego, concluding at the Henry Fox Talbot Museum in the United Kingdom. The accompanying catalogue, The Theater of Insects, was published by Chronicle Books. Whaley received a National Endowment Visual Artists Fellowship in 1994 as well as five grants to work with the Polaroid 20 × 24 camera in New York between 1989 and 1993. Her work is included in the traveling exhibition and companion book The Polaroid Project (University of California Press).