New Exhibition: “Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture”

Opens tomorrow, Saturday, October 30

                  © Estate of Alice Neel

The National Portrait Gallery presents the first major museum exhibition showing how questions of gender and sexual identity have dramatically shaped the creation of modern American portraiture. “Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture” will be on view through February 13, 2011.

Long before the advent of today’s gay and lesbian movement, many examples of art—paintings, sculptures, watercolors, prints, and photographs—acknowledged a variety of sexual identities. This exhibition features artists and sitters with a range of identities, from exclusively same-sex to exclusively heterosexual.

“The exhibition is titled ‘Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture’ because those with different sexual identities—who are of, but not fully a part of, the society they portrayed—occupied a position of influential marginality,” said NPG historian David C. Ward, who is also co-curator of the exhibition. “From this vantage point they crafted innovative and revolutionary ways of painting portraits. Society’s attempt to forbid them forced them to resist by developing new visual ways to code, disguise and express their subjects’ identities—and also their own.”


© Annie Leibovitz, 2010

Among the objects in the exhibition are Salutat by Thomas Eakins; Painting No. 47, Berlin by Marsden Hartley; Romaine Brooks’s 1923 oil-on-canvas self-portrait; Rrose Sélavy (Marcel Duchamp) by Man Ray; a photograph of Janet Flanner taken in 1927 by Berenice Abbott; Canto XIV by Robert Rauschenberg; We Two Boys Together Clinging by David Hockney; Troy Diptych and Camouflage Self-Portrait, both by Andy Warhol; Souvenir by Jasper Johns; Felix, June 5, 1994, by AA Bronson; and Ellen DeGeneres in Kauai, Hawaii, by Annie Leibovitz (shown above).

Co-curators of this exhibition are David C. Ward and Jonathan Katz, director of the doctoral program in visual studies, State University of New York at Buffalo.

The exhibition has been made possible by The Calamus Foundation with the leadership contributions of Donald A. Capoccia and Tommie L. Pegues, and The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts. Additional significant support is provided by many generous friends of the National Portrait Gallery, including the John Burton Harter Charitable Trust, E*TRADE, Ella Foshay, Vornado/Charles E. Smith, the Wyeth Foundation for American Art, Catherine V. Dawson, Robby Browne and Madison Cumnock, The Durst Organization, Ashton Hawkins and Johnnie Moore, The Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation, The Morrison & Foerster Foundation, Occasions Caterers, the David Schwartz Foundation, Frank J. Sciame, Jonathan Sheffer and Christopher Barley, and Jon Stryker.

Images:
Frank O'Hara / Alice Neel / Oil on canvas, 1960 / National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution; gift of Hartley S. Neel; © Estate of Alice Neel

James Baldwin / Beauford Delaney / Pastel on paper, 1963 / National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution

Ellen DeGeneres / Annie Leibovitz / Gelatin silver print, 1997 / Collection of the artist; © Annie Leibovitz, 2010

Janet Flanner / Berenice Abbott / Photographic print, 1927 / Prints and Photgraphs Division, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. / © Berenice Abbott / Commerce Graphics Ltd., Inc.

 

Comments

[David]

lets have a gay muslem exhibt. its obvious that this is meant to offend christains. witch i do not beleive in either but i am tired of the christain bashing in this country.this is just trash.the smithsonian was 1st. on my list to visit during my christmas break but not now.sad sad sad.i hope congress does do something about this but sadly its all talk and will be forgotten after their news bits. this is sad also.

[Ragfish]

Art created by unregenerate man is by definition degenerate. We are in a downward spiral, reversing the Rennaisance and Enlightenment, eras whose art served to glorify God.

Like the economics of homosexual pedophile John Maynard Keynes, this narcissitic art serves to debase our commons and further alienate us from each other.
Such caustic freedom is a universal acid to society and further grooms the public desensitization to sin and alienation from God.
There will be a final reckoning for those who mislead the children who view the exhibit and are influenced by its underlying theme.

Freedom for expressing this ought not be suppressed, but should entirely supported by private funding and exhibited in a R environment.

[your mom]

Well, I'd like to welcome you to hypocrit-ville. Your bible tells you not to judge...I believe that's supposed to be left up to your not-yet-proven-to-exhist spirit in the sky to do. And besides, what is it hurting you? Are you failing in life because of an art exhibit at the Smithsonian? Is your or your family's life in danger because of this exhibit? I love the art...for the art.. most of the stories are intriguing. I'd love to see this exhibit..maybe they'll come to New Orleans.

[JB]

Hide/Seek exhibit ART? This is NOT art! Art portrays beauty... do you see any beauty here? I THINK NOT! Wake up...this life is temporal... think on those things that are eternal and you too can be saved from this moral corruption and depravity. PS: HE is not dead, HE is risen, AMEN!!!

[Steve]

an institution setup to educate the public on the dialog of art is now educating on the dialog of censorship. how sad i was taught America was above this. you should of course change the .edu to .cn the land of the, well, the land anyways.

[Steve]

As i continue to produce art it will be my fervent effort to never let any art be displayed here as a lasting effect of the Portrait Galleries obvious censorship policies. thanks for supporting the arts.

[Dr Geoffrey Parkes]

if it is the case that, as per the statement issued by the exhibition's curators that "“However, we want visitors to the National Portrait Gallery to experience the exhibition without further alteration. Mr. Bronson’s photograph is a brilliant and sobering meditation on the human tragedy of AIDS and the power of portraiture.” then it must surely follow that David Wojnaorwicz's work be restored, unaltered, to the exhibition.
I do not support the demonisation of the Smithsonian - I understand that it was acting according to pressure from powers above; yet I cannot support such political and linguistic trickery in the face of the legitimate and significant public outcry that has severely overshadowed the original exhibition.
I am hoping the gallery understands that caving in to pressure after only a few complaints, as opposed to the visits of over ten thousand people, was the wrong thing to do. I can only wish that Wojnarowicz's work would be restored and the integrity of the exhibition and the gallery and the decision making process would also be restored.
Kind regards