"Elvis at 21: Photographs by Alfred Wertheimer" is on view through January 23, 2011.
In 1956, twenty-six-year-old Alfred Wertheimer was asked by RCA Records to photograph a rising twenty-one-year-old star named Elvis Presley. Upon receiving the assignment, Wertheimer responded “Elvis who?”
“I had never heard the name Elvis Presley in my life, at that time,” says Wertheimer. “He was basically a well-known regional singer in the South and now he was breaking in on the national scene.”
"Elvis at 21: Photographs by Alfred Wertheimer" showcases fifty-six photographs taken during Wertheimer’s short time with Elvis, documenting a young singer on the cusp of superstardom. The exhibition offers an intimate look at the public and private life of one of the world's most famous figures—from the diners to the train stops—in 1956. “Elvis at 21” is on view at the National Portrait Gallery through January 23, 2011.
Alfred Wertheimer was interviewed by Warren Perry, co-curator of “Elvis at 21.” The exhibition is on tour; for dates and locations, visit the tour schedule.
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.”
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.
Al Wertheimer first met Elvis in early 1956 when he was contracted by RCA to photograph the young singer. Wertheimer shot photos of Elvis in New York first, then later, apart from his contract, in Richmond and Memphis. Wertheimer says he spent his time following Elvis, "Tagging along like a little dog. I just kept snapping."
Elvis is shown performing in many of the photos, certainly, but he is also depicted much more intimately in many of the images. Some photos capture him in moments of quiet—both alone and with family members, friends, or girlfriends. Of all the images, perhaps the most talked about is the one Wertheimer calls "The Kiss," (above) in which Elvis and a beautiful young woman are sharing a softly passionate exchange in a stairwell of the Mosque Theatre in Richmond. The identity of the ingénue is unknown.
This body of work is now a national treasure, and serves to document the early moments of the Elvis phenomenon. Wertheimer's photos, according to Chris Murray of Govinda, "are a one of a kind look at the greatest American entertainer of all time."
—Warren Perry, Catalog of American Portraits, National Portrait Gallery
Lincoln Schatz’s generative portraits of nineteen leading American innovators, known collectively as Esquire’s Portrait of the Twenty-First Century, were created in 2008 on commission from the magazine. The portraits are on view at the National Portrait Gallery through July 10, 2011, as part of the “Americans Now” exhibition.
Esquire’s Portrait of the Twenty-First Century in "Americans Now"
Each of theses sitters—representing leadership in the realms of business, medicine, science, technology, and the arts, and including celebrities like George Clooney and LeBron James—sat for his or her portrait for one hour in the artist’s ten-by-ten-foot “Cube.” During this time they participated in activities of personal interest.
The "Cube" in studio. Photo from incolnschatz.com
The Cube is embedded with twenty-four cameras, each of which recorded the sitter from a different angle. The ever-changing “generative portrait” that results consists for the footage from each camera played back for different durations and in different sequences, creating a representation that is analogous to a personal encounter with these individuals.
Schatz was Interviewed by Jesse Rhodes of Smithsonian Magazine; learn more about his work in Rhode’s article for the Smithsonian's Around the Mall blog.
“Americans Now,” drawn from the National Portrait Gallery’s collection, features portraits of outstanding individuals in the realms of science, business, government and the arts. The exhibition will be on view through June 19, 2011.
The show includes such familiar names as Erykah Badu, Christo and Jeanne-Claude, Tom Hanks, Tony Hawk, Jay-Z, LL Cool J, Willie Nelson, Cormac McCarthy, Toni Morrison and Martha Stewart. These figures have been portrayed by some of the most prominent artists of our era: Chuck Close, Robert McCurdy, Elizabeth Peyton, Martin Schoeller, Kehinde Wiley and Dan Winters. The wide range of sitters continues with an iconic image of President Barack Obama by Shepard Fairey and a portrait of Michelle Obama by artist Mickalene Thomas.
“Americans Now” showcases a variety of media. Examples include a projected video—The Late Night Triad by Jason Salavon, which features Jay Leno, Conan O’Brien and David Letterman—and video portraits of George Clooney and LeBron James that are a created through a process pioneered by Lincoln Schatz.
Thirty-three years ago today, Elvis Presley died at his home, Graceland, in Memphis, Tennessee. At the time, had anyone told the world that Elvis would be as revered three-plus decades later as he was when he was in his prime, it is likely that the prognosticator would be ridiculed. However, the madness of such a forecast is only now exceeded by the madness that is still Elvis-mania. Hundreds of thousands of people visit Graceland yearly, and Elvis’s recordings sell to each succeeding generation.
The National Portrait Gallery’s exhibition, “Echoes of Elvis,” is a collection of works that were created since Elvis’s death and pay tribute to the late king of rock and roll. Exhibition curator Warren Perry said, “We have been really pleased to be able to salute one of history’s greatest entertainers. That the show has been well received is due to Elvis’s continuing popularity, a third of a century since his death.”
The Portrait Gallery will also be paying homage to the king with a second Elvis show this year, “Elvis at 21,” which will feature photos (above) of Elvis by photographer Al Wertheimer. RCA asked Wertheimer to photograph Elvis during a March 1956 visit to New York, during which the young singer made an appearance on The Steve Allen Show and later recorded “Hound Dog” and “Don’t Be Cruel.”
“Elvis at 21” will open on October 23, 2010, and run through January 23, 2011. “Echoes of Elvis” will close on August 29.
The National Portrait Gallery owns more than sixty of Jo Davidson’s portraits in bronze, marble, terra-cotta, and plaster, acquired over a number of years. Born in New York to Russian immigrant parents, Davidson struggled financially at the beginning of his career. But by the 1920s, his reputation as a leading portraitist in France, England, and the United States was secure, and later he became so well known that a photograph of his jovial, black-bearded countenance served as a clue in a crossword puzzle!
Jo Davidson’s charisma endeared him to many of his famous subjects. One of my favorites is our portrait of his contemporary, the sculptor and heiress Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney (1875–1942), one of those charmed by Davidson, and one of his earliest patrons. Just after she had been introduced to Davidson in Paris in 1908, Whitney began to purchase his work and to correspond with him, arranging visits when she was in France. In 1909 she wrote, “I hope you come to America. It’s good to go and look around there once in a while . . . come and look at me! too.”
During the years just after his marriage in 1909, Davidson and his wife Yvonne, a designer of fashionable dresses, did live in New York, where Whitney found studio space for him in MacDougal Alley, near her own studio and the new Whitney Studio Club on West Eighth Street. In 1917, she made a bronze portrait of Davidson. But Davidson’s 1916 portrait of Whitney was not a friendly gift; it was commissioned in order to help Davidson financially.
The portrait is very like contemporary photographs of Whitney, with her deep-set eyes, narrow brow, and thick hair. Davidson was known for capturing a likeness quickly, and he imbued his sitters with a vivacity born from conversation. As he confessed, “I often wondered what it was that drove me to make busts of people. It wasn’t so much that they had faces that suggested sculpture. . . . [It] was the people themselves—to be with them, to hear them speak and watch their faces change.”
The portrait was produced in several versions. Whitney mentioned a plaster and a polychromed terra-cotta in her correspondence from 1916 and 1917. A marble is in the collection of the Whitney Museum of American Art. Davidson owned two plasters, and perhaps a version of the terra-cotta bust. But no contemporary bronze is known.
In 1968, this particular bust was cast in bronze for the National Portrait Gallery, using a plaster that had remained in the Davidson family. It was cast by the Valsuani foundry in France, the foundry Davidson used during his lifetime. That we know this much about Davidson’s portrait (and there is still much that we do not know) is due to our ongoing research into his sculptural production, initiated in 1993, when we examined Davidson’s personal papers at the Library of Congress.
This research brought us into contact with Davidson’s surviving son, Jacques Davidson, who, although he has now passed away, lived in France, where Jo owned a house. Jacques, as charming as his father, had been in touch with the Gallery over the years. During a trip to America with his son, he visited the Gallery again and examined many of our sculptures, offering opinions and reminiscences, and adding to our knowledge of Jo’s work.
Jo Davidson and Whitney remained close until her death in 1942. They visited each other, traveled together, and corresponded. Whitney bought heaps of Yvonne’s designer dresses for herself and her daughters. In 1927, she wrote a long, philosophical letter to Davidson, which began, “Life is funny and you are wonderful.” Davidson’s sensitive portrait of Whitney expresses his relationship with a woman who was not only a fellow artist and his patron, but also his friend.
- Brandon Brame Fortune , Curator of Painting & Sculpture, National Portrait Gallery
Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney / Jo Davidson / Bronze, 1968 cast after 1916 original / National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution
Further reading: Davidson’s autobiography, Between Sittings (New
York, 1951), is full of anecdotes about his life and his sitters. For
an account of Davidson’s work, see Janis Conner and Joel Rosenkranz,
Rediscoveries in American Sculpture: Studio Works, 1893–1939
(Austin, Tex., 1989). The standard biography of Whitney, with
references to her friendship with Davidson, is B. H. Friedman, Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney (New York, 1978).
My supervisor, Rosemary Fallon, has been paper conservator at the National Portrait Gallery for twenty-two years. During my first week, she presented me with a major treatment challenge: a grimy, foxed, ink-stained engraving of James Monroe, our fifth president. The early nineteenth-century print also had moisture stains, and its top had been folded back and torn—probably the result of squeezing it into a too-tight frame. Before it could be displayed in the “New Arrivals” exhibition this November, the important engraving needed help.
According to Wendy Wick Reaves, the Portrait Gallery’s curator of prints and drawings, Thomas Gimbrede created the engraving in 1817, basing it upon a John Vanderlyn portrait painted during Monroe’s candidacy. The engraving became the public image of Monroe during his presidency, and now both the original portrait and a rare copy of the engraving are part of the Portrait Gallery’s collection.
Cleaning up the president has required me to use a range of treatment techniques. I began by removing the surface grime with grated vinyl eraser crumbs, which are gentle enough to lift dirt without disturbing the paper fibers. I then tested the solubility of the disfiguring blue ink stain, and used a suction disk to pull the dampened ink into a blotter rather than letting it spread into the surrounding paper fibers.
When the stain had been reduced, I bathed the print in several changes of water at a slightly alkaline pH. Yes, bathed. Art conservation is a field that requires advanced education in chemistry, studio art, and art history—as well as a certain amount of chutzpah. While most people quiver at the thought of submerging paper-based artwork, paper conservators wade right in. (Only, of course, after thorough testing of the inks and other media!) Washing helps to pull out the acidic degradation products that darken paper and speed its deterioration.
When the engraving was still foxed and discolored after washing, I bathed the darkened areas locally on the suction table and then turned to light bleaching. The immersed print was exposed to UV-filtered fluorescent light for fourteen hours: a purely cosmetic treatment that can work wonders in lightening darkened cellulose. The paper is now significantly brighter, more uniform, and ready for mending.
For more information about art conservation, visit the Lunder Conservation Center. Glass walls invite you to watch us work, and a staff conservator offers a public tour every Wednesday at 3:00 p.m. To see the improved James Monroe, visit the “New Arrivals” exhibition, which opens on November 19 at the National Portrait Gallery.
Reducing the blue ink stain with deionized water on the suction disk. Photo by Rosemary Fallon.
Removing the engraving of James Monroe from its light bleaching bath. Photo by Steven O'Banion.
Bathing the print margins with alkaline water on the suction table to reduce foxing. Photo by Rosemary Fallon.
“Portraiture Now: Communities” closes Monday, July 5. The exhibition features works by Rose Frantzen, Jim Torok, and Rebecca Westcott.
Born and raised in Maquoketa, Iowa, Rose Frantzen studied representational painting at the American Academy of Art in Chicago, the Lyme Academy of Fine Arts in Connecticut, and with painter Richard Schmid in Chicago. Frantzen traveled extensively before returning to Maquoketa, where she paints and teaches.
In 2005 Franzten received a grant from the Iowa Arts Council to support her idea to paint a representative, but self-selected, group of citizens of Maquoketa. She rented a storefront on Main Street, hung posters, gave an interview to the local radio station, and began to paint anyone who lived in the town who was willing to sit for the four or five hours required to complete one of her paintings.
For Frantzen, this was an opportunity to give back to her community and democratize portraiture. As she states, to be her subject for the Portrait of Maquoketa, “You are worthy because you are here, in this town, in this time.” The resulting 180 paintings were created in 2005 and 2006. Frantzen’s work updates the alla prima technique, direct, wet-into-wet painting that requires enormous skill and stamina on the part of the artist.
On view in the new exhibition “One Life: Echoes of Elvis”
Elvis Presley released hundreds of records throughout a career that spanned slightly more than two decades. He also starred in thirty-one feature films and two documentaries. He was photographed throughout his career, and images of him on film are part of the American visual experience. However, the King of Rock and Roll only sat for one portrait painter—Ralph Wolfe Cowan.
Elvis sat for Cowan in 1969, and Cowan produced the portrait that hangs today at Graceland. At the time, Cowan also made sketches for this portrait but left them alone until 1988, when he completed this work. At the time this portrait was drafted, Elvis was transitioning from making films to performing live; from 1968 until his death in 1977, he toured regularly. Of Elvis, Cowan said, he “was funny and had charisma that was bigger than life. I enjoyed our friendship.”
Cowan’s portrait is on display as part of the National Portrait Gallery’s new exhibition “One Life: Echoes of Elvis.” This one-room exhibition marks the seventh-fifth anniversary of Elvis Presley’s birth and also includes works by William Eggleston, Red Grooms, Robert Arneson, and others.
-Warren Perry, National Portrait Gallery
Listen to an interview of artist Ralph Wolfe Cowan by “Echoes of Elvis” curator Warren Perry (22:33)
Elvis Presley / Ralph Wolfe Cowan (born 1931) / Oil on canvas, 1976–88 / National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution; gift of R. W. Cowan
A key to Bill Clinton’s successes as president, along with his resilience and personal affability, was his determination to govern through consensus. Major accomplishments, such as welfare reform, the first budget surplus since the late 1960s, and successful U.S. intervention in the Balkans stemmed from this pragmatic viewpoint. Other proposals, such as universal health care, failed. His administration was plagued by several scandals, such as Whitewater and the consequences of his affair with a White House intern. His denial under oath about this relationship led to his impeachment. He was not convicted in the Senate trial, however, and his popularity actually increased as Americans continued to admire Clinton for his political talents, quick intelligence, and determination.
Chuck Close begins all his paintings by taking a photograph of the subject, in this case a 2005 image made as a cover for New York Magazine. He then creates grids on both the canvas and the original image to replicate the information contained in the photograph with a series of abstract modules. The portrait is on loan to the National Portrait Gallery from Ian and Annette Cumming, and is now on view in the “America’s Presidents” exhibition on the second floor.
The National Portrait Gallery begins a year of salute to Elvis Presley, the King of Rock and Roll, with the opening of “Echoes of Elvis” on January 8, 2010, what would have been Elvis’s seventy-fifth birthday.
“Echoes of Elvis” will feature portraits of the entertainer created since his death in 1977. Among the works in the exhibition are pieces by Robert Arneson, Red Grooms (shown at right), and Ralph Wolfe Cowan from the collections of the National Portrait Gallery, the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, the United States Postal Service collection, and the High Museum of Art in Atlanta.
Several public programs will accompany the exhibition, beginning on January 23, when longtime Elvis friend and Memphis disc jockey George Klein will be signing his Elvis memoir, My Best Man. On the same day, NPG will host an Elvis costume contest. On March 26, the latest installment in the Edgar P. Richardson Symposium series will feature several scholars discussing Elvis Presley’s impact on music and culture.
On Saturday, October 30, 2010, the National Portrait Gallery will open the doors to “Elvis at 21: Photographs by Alfred Wertheimer.” This exhibition will feature more than forty monumental images of Elvis from 1956. NPG historian Amy Henderson writes that during 1956, “Elvis’s electrifying intrusion was as shocking as Sputnik would be a year later.” Wertheimer’s photographs are the visual testimonial to Elvis’s launch; many of the images show Elvis in the last moments he would ever have as an individual unburdened by the trappings of fame. After 1956, Elvis belonged to the world.
The young fans who worshipped him in legions would serve as the nucleus of his fan base throughout his career. For the next twenty-one years, Elvis would continually serve notice in the entertainment world: his standard was the one to follow. Although the statement is often quoted, John Lennon’s comment that “before Elvis there was nothing” is perhaps the greatest statement of tribute by the most famous of all Elvis supplicants.
“When Elvis arrived, the youth of America took over,” states “Echoes of Elvis” curator Warren Perry. “Prior to the advent of rock and roll, young people were powerless in American society; rock and roll gave American youth a voice and an attitude. Elvis was the advance guard for the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, and The Who. Later, after his time in the military, and as his fan base aged, Elvis became more accepted throughout America and the world. Still later, after more than a decade in the movies, Elvis reinvented himself. Elvis and his manager, Colonel Tom Parker, took Elvis’s showmanship to the next level, and they rewrote the script for the Las Vegas experience.”
“Echoes of Elvis” will run until from January 8 to August 29, 2010; “Elvis at 21” will run from October 30 to January 23, 2011.
--Warren Perry, National Portrait Gallery
Elvis Aron Presley / Red Grooms / Lithograph on paper, 1987 / National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution
Rap star and actor James Todd Smith changed his name to LL Cool J (short for “Ladies Love Cool James”) at sixteen, when he released his first single, “I Need a Beat.” In the late 1980s, the success of his recordings helped make Def Jam a major label: his broad popular appeal and nine consecutive multiplatinum albums were significant in transforming rap from an underground genre to a mainstream cultural force.
Beginning in 1993, he included gangsta rap in his repertoire. He has also crossed over to acting, both in film (Toys, Halloween H20, Rollerball), and television (In the House, 30 Rock, House); currently, he is a regular in the series NCIS: Los Angeles.
Kehinde Wiley was commissioned to paint LL Cool J for the VH1 Hip Hop Honors program in September 2005. Last year, a selection of Wiley’s works was displayed at the National Portrait Gallery, as part of the exhibition “RECOGNIZE! Hip Hop and Contemporary Portraiture.” For “RECOGNIZE!” Wiley included paintings from his Hip Hop Honors body of work, depicting some of the foot soldiers of the hip hop movement. The artists chose poses from Wiley’s personal art book collection that best suited the performative and personal aspects of their character. Inspired by Ron Chernow’s biography of John D. Rockefeller, LL Cool J wanted this portrait to have a pose similar to John Singer Sargent’s painting of the philanthropist.
Dave Woody of Fort Collins, Colorado, has received first prize in the National Portrait Gallery’s 2009 Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition. His photograph, titled Laura (shown on right), was chosen as the winner from a field of more than three thousand entries in every visual arts medium. First prize was a cash award of $25,000 and a commission from the museum to portray a remarkable living American for the NPG permanent collection. Woody’s portrait, as well as works from forty-eight other artists, are on display at the National Portrait Gallery, in the Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition exhibition on the second floor.
Of his work, Woody comments, “I am never really attracted to photographing subjects who are totally self-aware or self-confident, as I’m more interested in those people who move through this world with a quiet grace. Spending time with friends allows me to see them in a certain light where their mask drops and something soft and inviting is seen, and I’ll think of making a photograph of them.”
Stanley Rayfield of Richmond, Virginia, received second prize for a painting titled Dad, while third place went to Adam Vinson of Jenkintown, Pennsylvania for his oil-on-panel painting titled Dressy Bessy Takes a Nap. Commended artists are Margaret Bowland, for a her painting Portrait of Kenyetta and Brianna; Yolanda del Amo, for her C-print photograph Sarah, David; Gaela Erwin, for her pastel on paper Baptismal Self-Portrait; and Emil Robinson for an oil-on-panel portrait titled Showered. Each was awarded a cash prize.
NPG Director Martin Sullivan states, “The variety and depth of the entries was encouraging to me since it proved that portraiture is an ever-evolving genre. And best of all, this competition allows the National Portrait Gallery and its visitors to see how today’s artists interpret portraiture in all of its forms.” Finalists for the 2009 competition were chosen in early May, and the winners were announced at the Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition Awards Celebration on Thursday, October 22. In addition, one exhibiting artist will win the People’s Choice Award, in which visitors to the exhibition, both online and in the gallery, may cast a vote for their favorite of the forty-nine finalists. Voting for the People’s Choice Award will close on January 18, 2010.
The competition is named for Virginia Outwin Boochever, a former NPG docent and an ardent supporter of the Portrait Gallery. The exhibition’s catalog describes Mrs. Boochever’s endowment for the portrait competition “as a way to benefit artists directly… as a unique opportunity to fill a void in the American art world.” The works in the Portrait Competition will be on display until August 22, 2010. To view images of the works, see the exhibition Web site.
Bursting into Hollywood’s dream factory, Katharine Hepburn was an ironic misfit, sporting a highly stylized personality and headstrong independence that boldly announced a new kind of female presence on the silver screen. Her performances in Morning Glory (1933), Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner (1967), The Lion in Winter (1968), and On Golden Pond, (1981) won her four Best Actress Academy Awards, a record that still stands today. The National Portrait Gallery recently acquired the four Oscar statuettes as a gift from the Katharine Hepburn Estate; they are now on view in the “Twentieth-Century Americans” gallery on the museum’s third floor, next to a 1982 portrait of Hepburn by artist Everett Raymond Kinstler.
Katharine Hepburn was honored first for her role in Morning Glory (1933). This statuette is a legend in itself. Although the origin of the term “Oscar” is debatable, its first use was in an article by entertainment columnist Sidney Skolsky. Reporting on the ceremony and stumped on the spelling of “statuette,” the term that was commonly used to refer to the award, Skolsky instead wrote that Hepburn “won the Oscar for her performance as Eva Lovelace in Morning Glory.”
The Oscar statuette was designed in 1927 by MGM art director Cedric Gibbons and sculpted by George Stanley. The figure stands on a film reel with five spokes, signifying the original branches of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences: actors, directors, producers, technicians, and writers. The pedestal was raised in 1945, giving the Oscar a height of 13 ½ inches; it weighs 8 ½ pounds. Rather than its original gold-plated bronze, it is now composed of the alloy britannia and coated in twenty-four-karat gold. These design changes are why Hepburn’s first Oscar, for Morning Glory (1933), appears smaller and less opulent.
Learn more about Katharine Hepburn by visiting the online exhibition for "KATE: A Centennial Celebration.” This exhibition was on view at the National Portrait Gallery from November 2, 2007, to September 28, 2008.
Katharine Hepburn's four Best Actress Academy Awards (Morning Glory, 1933; Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, 1967; The Lion in Winter, 1968; On Golden Pond, 1981) / National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution; gift of the estate of Katharine Hepburn
Private collection, courtesy of Francis M. Naumann Fine Art
“Inventing Marcel Duchamp: The Dynamics of Portraiture” opens this Friday, March 27, at the National Portrait Gallery. The exhibition casts new light upon Marcel Duchamp (1887–1968), one of the most influential artists of the recent past. Showcasing approximately 100 never-before-assembled portraits and self-portraits of Duchamp, the show demonstrates that the artist harnessed the power of portraiture and self-portraiture both to secure his reputation as an iconoclast and to establish himself as a major figure in the art world.
The exhibition includes works by his contemporaries Man Ray, Alfred Stieglitz, Francis Picabia, and Florine Stettheimer, as well as portraits by a more recent generation of artists, such as Andy Warhol, Jasper Johns, Sturtevant, Yasumasa Morimura, David Hammons, Beatrice Wood, and Douglas Gordon. “Inventing Marcel Duchamp: The Dynamics of Portraiture” closes on August 2, 2009.
In this blog post, we focus on one of the works featured in the exhibition: Portrait multiple de Marcel Duchamp (Five-Way Portrait of Marcel Duchamp) (above). Throughout a lengthy career that spanned much of the twentieth century, Marcel Duchamp recast accepted modes for assembling and describing identity. In 1917, having recently arrived in the United States, he found special significance in a mechanically produced photo-postcard that depicted him simultaneously from five different vantage points. The five-way picture, made by sitting in front of a hinged mirror, had gained popularity by the late nineteenth century and was commonly found in photography studios and at amusement parks. Produced in editions of three, the portrait could be shared with friends.
The Five-Way Portrait of Marcel Duchamp suggests the artist’s early recognition of the multifarious nature of personal identity, something he would continue to explore throughout his career. Fascinated with the way portraits shape identity, Duchamp exploited the genre, often turning conventional codes for portrayal on their head.
For Duchamp, postcards were more than a novelty. By integrating the multiple portrait into his larger body of work, Duchamp transformed a mechanical picture, made by an anonymous camera operator, into a self-portrait that embodied his view of identity as fractured and unstable. It prefigures his creation of various alter egos, such as Rrose Sélavy. The picture was made on June 21, 1917, at the Broadway Photo Studio at the same time that Duchamp was photographed with his friends Francis Picabia and Beatrice Wood.
Listen to James McManus, co-curator of the exhibition, discuss Five-Way Portrait of Marcel Duchamp (1:46)
Portrait multiple de Marcel Duchamp (Five-Way Portrait of Marcel Duchamp) / Unidentified photographer / Gelatin silver print, 1917 / Private collection, courtesy of Francis M. Naumann Fine Art
The National Portrait Gallery's exhibition “Ballyhoo! Posters as Portraiture” is closing soon, so see it while you can—its final day is this Sunday, February 8. The exhibition features sixty posters ranging in date from the late nineteenth century to the present, including subjects as diverse as General John J. Pershing, “Buffalo Bill” Cody, Joe Louis, Judy Garland, Dorothy Dandridge (below right), aviator Jimmy Doolittle, and labor leader Lane Kirkland.
In this blog post, the NPG’s Warren Perry talks with Wendy Wick Reaves, who reflects on the exhibition. Reaves is the curator of prints and drawings at the National Portrait Gallery.
WWR: Technically for a curator, when the exhibition is up on the walls, our job is done, and we’re really supposed to be putting our attention to the next show. But in fact, you end up doing VIP tours and special-interest tours—you talk to the press, you talk to your docents, you do a couple of public gallery talks—and during all of this you’re getting feedback. And that’s kind of interesting to reflect on towards the end of a run for a show.
For this exhibition, for instance, I found that every visitor brought his or her own experiences and ideas to a poster show. Everyone understands posters—as advertising, as propaganda sometimes, as promotion. And they often know elements of that historical moment that you don’t know. I learned a lot from my visitors’ comments, memories, and perspectives. They corrected my labels, as a matter of fact, and changed my thinking.
And it’s been fun. I remember at the press preview, when I was talking about Admiral Bull Halsey (left), who is quoted on the poster with the phrases, “Hit hard, hit fast, hit often,” and one of the reporters snorted out, “Yeah, but he would have said it in much more colorful language.” And in one of my tours, when I was talking about the Pete Sampras milk-moustache poster (below) as the anti-glamour campaign that reflected the familiarity and intimacy we felt about celebrity figures by the 1990s—I made the mistake of saying, “He could be anyone in your family on the way to the shower.” Three slightly older ladies immediately and simultaneously responded, “Not in my family!”
Posters are often considered popular culture artifacts. And although that can be hard to define precisely, it basically means to me objects that have a broad appeal, are accessible to a mainstream audience, grow out of a shared vernacular culture, are frequently reinforced by mass media, and are sometimes mass produced and widely available.
And I found that they differ from the fine art objects that we also collect and exhibit. The response and reception is sometimes different, both internally and externally. Some people question whether this material really is art, or history, or culture, or portraiture. So sometimes there are prejudices. Will your show be covered by the press? And if it is, will they treat it like just mass entertainment? Or will they really cover the broader perspective that you’ve tried to outline?
But there are also a lot of compensations about a show that is basically popular culture artifacts. New audiences, certainly, are another great benefit. In my case, I got design students of all kinds—illustrators, advertisers, a world of people laboring in graphic communication. Also, the general audience appeal was multigenerational. The World War II generation reminisced about Halsey. So did their kids, who once owned the iconic Dylan poster. Even their children felt a connection to rock, film, and sports advertising—like the poster of Lance Armstrong—and even appreciated those elements from previous eras.
Everyone I spoke to enjoyed seeing what could be extracted about history, art, design, and cultural trends, from the modest poster. I guess what I found most rewarding, in retrospect, was understanding how popular cultural artifacts give telling glimpses of historical moments—shared generational presumptions; prejudices; ideals of beauty; standards of manliness; attitudes about race, gender, and sexual difference—it’s really like having a little window into a moment in history.
WP: You are the curator who began assembling this collection. How long have you been assembling this collection for NPG?
WWR: I guess I’ve been collecting posters for about twenty-five years now. We’ve gotten some wonderful gifts along the line. I’ve worked with a number of dealers who were passionate about posters—and really wanted to help build the collection here at the Portrait Gallery—and were very generous with trying to train me and my eye and find the kinds of things we would use here. We are looking for something with a fair amount of wall power. And we’re looking for, of course, the portrait subject as well.
WP: I know it’s a little like asking a mom if she has a favorite child, but you have to tell us—do you have a favorite in the lot of posters?
WWR: Oh, that is really a difficult question to answer. I guess the answer is that I have a lot of favorites. I’ve always liked the Rita Hayworth poster (above). I think the John Wilkes Booth Civil War broadside (right), advertising for the capture of Booth after Lincoln’s assassination, is one of my favorites. It worked as such a perfect introduction of what poster art is about. It can also be called a Civil War broadside; some people wouldn’t even consider is a poster. But for me, it worked perfectly—that combination of words and typography, with visual images, and that quality of sensationalism that you often get in a poster.
Listen to the entire discussion with curator Wendy Wick Reaves (8:38)
For more on posters visit the online exhibition for “Ballyhoo! Posters As Portraiture” and view the audio slideshow below, narrated by Wendy Wick Reaves, who curated the exhibition.
Victory Begins at Home / Admiral William F. Halsey Jr. / Unidentified artist for Industrial Incentive Division, Navy Department, c. 1940 / National Portrait Gallery; gift of Leslie, Judith, and Gabri Schreyer and Alice Schreyer Batko
Trinidad / Rita Hayworth, Glenn Ford / Anselmo Ballester, 1953 / Color photolithographic halftone poster/ National Portrait Gallery
$100,000 Reward / John H. Surratt, John Wilkes Booth, David E. Herold / Unidentified artist, 1865 / Printed broadside with albumen silver prints / National Portrait Gallery
The vice presidency—a heartbeat away from what has been called the most powerful job in the world—has often been a subject of ridicule and dismissal rather than serious analysis. “Presidents in Waiting” takes a different viewpoint, emphasizing the importance of that office. It focuses on the fourteen vice presidents—almost one-third of our forty-three chief executives—who succeeded to the presidency, either upon the death of a sitting president, election in their own right, or (in one case), the resignation of a president.
“Presidents in Waiting” also offers interviews, conducted especially
for this exhibition, in which the former vice presidents discuss their
role and their relationship with the president. The exhibition is on view at National Portrait Gallery until January 3, 2010.
The framers of the Constitution believed that the vice presidency was significant enough to be occupied by a national figure—the runner-up in the presidential election. The Constitution, written before political parties emerged, specified that the candidate with the second-highest number of votes in the Electoral College would become vice president.
When political parties evolved during the 1790s, a change in procedure eventually became necessary because the candidate who came in second would belong to a different political party from that of the president-elect, as happened when Thomas Jefferson (above) became John Adams’s vice president in 1797. More complications during the election of 1800 resulted in the Twelfth Amendment being added to the Constitution in 1804, which had the electors voting separately for president and vice president.
A different public and private perception of the vice presidency quickly formed. The country’s first vice president, John Adams, called it “the most insignificant office”; Daniel Webster, who declined it, envisioned the office as a kind of premature burial; Franklin Roosevelt’s two-term vice president, John Nance Garner, said it was “not worth a warm bucket of spit”; and Lyndon Johnson noted that, notwithstanding the inherent pomp and ceremony, “in the end, it is nothing. I detested every minute of it.”
But a closer look at those who served or sought the office offers still another perspective. John Adams (right) was the second most popular man in the United States when he became vice president, and he took pride that his office was “beneath” only that of the president. Thomas Jefferson, whose fame was eclipsed only by Benjamin Franklin and George Washington, was the country’s second vice president. In 1824 and 1828, John C. Calhoun, who had been a powerful voice in Congress and James Monroe’s secretary of war, served as vice president under both John Quincy Adams and Andrew Jackson. Martin Van Buren, who largely created the modern Democratic Party as a vehicle for Andrew Jackson’s election, correctly saw the office as his route to the presidency. With the exceptions of John Tyler and Andrew Johnson, other nineteenth-century vice presidents who succeeded to the presidency, Millard Fillmore and Chester Arthur, served out their terms with competence, if not distinction.
As the United States emerged as a world power in the twentieth century, more powerful and influential men sought the vice presidential office. In 1900 Theodore Roosevelt was elected vice president, and in 1912, the nation’s best-known reform governor, Hiram Johnson of California, sought the office on Roosevelt’s Progressive Party ticket. In 1920, Franklin Roosevelt entered national politics by running unsuccessfully as vice president. John Nance Garner, a powerful congressional leader and Speaker of the House, traded in his position to become FDR’s vice president for two terms.
After World War II, the vice presidency underwent a further evolution. The development of the atomic bomb and the intercontinental missile brought an unprecedented urgency to issues of national security and the role of the vice president. In the mid-1950s, Sam Rayburn, the powerful Speaker of the House of Representatives, emphasized the importance of the president’s choice of a running-mate: “In these thermonuclear times you must select a man, one, that is the best for your country, two, that you trust so much that he would be the trustee for your wife and children when you die.”
Rising political stars of both parties sought the office, and in 1952 an ambitious young California senator, Richard Nixon, became Dwight Eisenhower’s vice president (above). Some presidential scholars point to Nixon as the first of the modern powerful and influential vice presidents. Although Nixon was not in the president’s inner circle, Eisenhower still delegated important tasks to him and kept him in the loop about national security issues.
Not all vice presidents who followed Nixon were given that much responsibility; however, the office attracted serious contenders, including Estes Kefauver, Lyndon Johnson (right), Edwin Muskie, Gerald Ford, Walter Mondale, Robert Dole, George H. W. Bush, Al Gore, and Dick Cheney. All were willing to give up powerful positions to be vice president, and—with the exception of Cheney—to increase their chances to eventually become president. Dan Quayle, senator from Indiana and George H. W. Bush’s vice president, later wrote, “almost every Senator wants it [the vice presidential office], even those who publicly express reluctance to be considered.” The vice presidency “remains the most likely route to the presidency, and the idea that ambitious politicians scorn the office is a myth.” They turn it down “only if they know it won’t be offered.”
“Presidents in Waiting” moves our ideas about the vice presidency closer to those of the framers of the Constitution, takes note of the changes the office has undergone, and provides us with a better understanding of both the office and the individuals who have served in it.
The curators of the exhibition are Sidney Hart, senior historian, and
James G. Barber, historian. The exhibition was made possible by Ford
Motor Company Fund. Be sure to see the online exhibition for more information, including video interviews with former vice presidents.
This column is part of an occasional series in which Washington-area university students discuss works on display in the National Portrait Gallery.
This blog post is written by Jamielyn Smith, a graphic design student at George Mason University. She writes about this 1970 poster of Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix. The poster is on display in the National Portrait Gallery’s exhibition “Ballyhoo! Posters as Portraiture,” on the museum’s second floor.
Smith’s article is reprinted here, with her permission—it was originally published in Writing for Designers, the class blog of GMU’s graphic design course AVT 395-4. Writing for Designers covers many topics in graphic design, and includes more student-written articles about the “Ballyhoo!” exhibition.
You might think that a poster featuring Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin, two of the most recognizable 1960s rock icons, would include the flamboyant colors and embellishments associated with their music. There is, however, absolutely nothing psychedelic about the L&S Productions poster entitled Winner? Created in 1970, the year Hendrix and Joplin both died of overdoses at the age of twenty-seven, Winner? presents a critical look at the drug-filled lifestyles led by these rock legends. As part of the National Portrait Gallery’s “Ballyhoo! Posters as Portraiture” exhibition, this piece displays its message with a fairly basic graphic palette of three colors, three photographs, and one word repeated twice.
Located on the back wall of the show room, Winner? stands out due to its simple, effective design. Contained within a red and yellow elliptical pill shape are photographs of Joplin and Hendrix. Both musicians are performing, their eyes closed and faces half covered. A sharply focused photograph of Joplin fills the red, top half of the composition, with the word “Winner?” centered underneath her image. An upside-down, softly focused photo of Hendrix appears underneath, on the yellow, bottom half of the pill—the word “Winner?” is also upside down and placed with his image.
The orientation of the photographs allows the poster to be flipped, while maintaining its imagery and purpose. The clever presentation symbolizes how easy it is to go from the top to the bottom. The careers of Hendrix and Joplin were at an all-time high in 1970, but everything ended in an instant because of their addictions. Along with the passing of Jim Morrison, their deaths helped bring the potential downside of drug use to the public’s attention. Furthermore, the elliptical shape means that the pill could continue to flip, representing the continuous cycle of drug abuse.
The restricted color palette and simplicity set this piece apart from the other posters in the exhibition, particularly the ones that also depict musicians and iconography from the 1960s. Posters from this era are usually colorful and saturated with surreal imagery, optical illusions, and kaleidoscopic swirling patterns. This complete lack of white space makes the viewer feel overwhelmed with imagery. They also feature hard to read, warped, organic typography. Therefore, it is especially shocking to see the king and queen of stoner rock in such an austere context.
Although this poster was created almost forty years ago, the message it communicates is still relevant today. The poster’s clean design references the 1960s in a subtle way that makes it appealing to contemporary viewers. Likewise, Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix continue to inspire modern audiences with their music. There is no question that Winner? is timeless.
This column begins an occasional series in which Washington-area university students discuss works on display in the National Portrait Gallery.
This article is written by Abbey Stickney, a graphic design student at George Mason University. She writes about this 1893 poster of performer Loïe Fuller by French artist Jules Chéret. The poster is on display in the National Portrait Gallery’s exhibition “Ballyhoo! Posters as Portraiture,” on the museum’s second floor.
Stickney’s article is reprinted here, with her permission—it was originally published in Writing for Designers, the class blog of GMU’s graphic design course AVT 395-4. Writing for Designers covers many topics in graphic design, and includes more student-written articles about the “Ballyhoo!” exhibition.
As a graphic designer, I found the “Ballyhoo! Posters as Portraiture” exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery very worthwhile. It gave credibility to design as an art form, as the show was surrounded by the elaborate oil paintings of famous musicians, presidents, and just plain wealthy people. To have posters displayed in such close proximity to these wonderful works of art makes the general public really look at design, possibly for the first time. It makes these people notice the composition, the color choices, and the mood of the piece as they would a painting by Rembrandt.
Among the vast array of posters on display, one in particular grabbed my attention. Maybe it was the simplicity of the composition, or maybe it was the woman herself. The poster was a celebration of life and color set against the black background of a stage curtain. The wild red hair of the pale woman was thrown back, and she was draped in a sheer golden gown. One of her legs was kicked up, and she appeared to be suspended in the air with her dress floating in circles around her, as if she has just completed a spin in the air and is now returning to earth.
The woman’s name was Loïe Fuller, and she was an American performer who was quite popular in Paris around the turn of the century. Fuller was a master showman who pioneered the use of colored stage lighting and used enormous silk costumes to exaggerate her movements on stage. She characterizes the art nouveau movement, as her flowing costumes appeared on stage like flowers and other objects found in nature. Fuller was also the first person to bring modern dance to Europe and present it as a true art form.
I feel this poster has captured the essence of Fuller’s performances. She appears here free and full of life, just like her performances were, I would imagine. You can even faintly see the colored stage lighting in the background. The only text on the poster is the name of the performer, La Loïe Fuller (at the top), and the place where she will be performing, the Folies-Bergère (at the bottom), a Paris opera house where nudity was not uncommon. The text type is red and has an organic feel to it that coordinates well with the image. With its rough, cut-out look, it appears to be handmade.
I think that it is very appropriate that this poster show was in a portrait gallery. Posters give the viewer more information than other portraits do: they tell the viewer not only about the person or people shown, but about the time in which the poster was created, the poster’s intended audience, and even the location in which the poster was to be displayed. This proves that not only are posters—and consequently graphic design as a whole—art, they are a seamless balancing act between both giving the viewer information and giving the viewer something that he or she wants to stop and look at. That is what good design does.
As “RECOGNIZE! Hip Hop and Contemporary Portraiture” draws to a close, we take a moment to reflect on the exhibition’s impact on the community. See the exhibition while you can; its last day is this Sunday, October 26.
It was the National Portrait Gallery's honor to be the first Smithsonian Institution museum to stage a significant exhibition with hip hop as its theme. Through visitor counts, positive comment cards, and the enthusiasm about the show witnessed daily in the galleries and in our conversations with friends and colleagues around town and around the nation, we are thrilled with the public’s positive response.
“RECOGNIZE!“ gave the National Portrait Gallery the opportunity to recognize hip hop’s important role in American life today, as it influences the fine arts as well as other elements of our visual culture from advertising to fashion to video games. It was important for us to give our visitors a sense that hip hop is more powerful and has more of an impact on our world than the media’s attention to its negative aspects might suggest.
Through hip hop happy hours, films, and family activities, to programs headlined by Nikki Giovanni and Paul “DJ Spooky” Miller, NPG attempted to maintain the spirit and enthusiasm of the exhibition through events geared to a broad public. “RECOGNIZE!” brought more diverse and younger audiences into the Gallery, many of whom visited for the first time.
Another special aspect of this exhibition was our ability to feature the work of local artists Tim “Con” Conlon, Dave “Arek” Hupp, Jefferson Pinder, and Baltimore-born Shinique Smith (right). It is sometimes difficult to give local artists the support so many of them deserve, but “RECOGNIZE!” enabled us to feature “D.C. flavor.”
As a national museum that is a destination for Americans from all parts of the country, as well as for international visitors, the Portrait Gallery was pleased with the opportunity this exhibition afforded to reflect our role as a local museum for residents of the greater Washington, D.C. metropolitan area.
Kehinde Wiley’s portraits of Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five and L.L. Cool J (left) will remain at the museum on extended loan, reminding us of hip hop music’s relevance to American culture, and keeping “RECOGNIZE! Hip Hop and Contemporary Portraiture” fresh in our memories. We look forward to seeing more hip hop–related displays and activities develop Smithsonian-wide, particularly associated with the National Museum of American History’s Hip Hop Collecting Initiative.
To all who visited the exhibition or one of the programs associated with it, we hope you will come back to NPG soon and often. There will always be something for each of you at the National Portrait Gallery.
CON/Tim Conlon and Dave Hupp, 2007/Montana spray paint on Sintra panel/182.9 x 609.6 cm (72 x 240 in)/Tim Conlon and Dave Hupp
No Thief to Blame/Shinique Smith, 2007-08/Mixed media installation (fabric, cardboard, carpet, paper, ink, spray paint, used clothing, found objects, and collage)
The National Portrait Gallery’s “RECOGNIZE! Hip Hop and Contemporary Portraiture” is closing soon, so be sure to see the exhibition before Sunday, October 26, its final day. The exhibition features six artists: photographer David Scheinbaum, painter Kehinde Wiley, poet Nikki Giovanni, installation artist Shinique Smith, video artist Jefferson Pinder, and graffiti artists Tim Conlon and Dave Hupp.
In this blog post, we focus on Tim Conlon and Dave Hupp, local graffiti artists who created four large murals that line the exhibition’s main hallway. These panels, with their sophisticated lettering style and color combinations, transformed the gallery space, bringing the beats and energy of hip hop to the museum’s walls.
Using the tags “CON” and “AREK,” Tim Conlon and Dave Hupp began writing together in 2000. Conlon brought a flair for figures to their collaborations, and Hupp excelled at quick, complex lettering. Since graffiti is performed without a public audience, a writer’s pseudonym, or “tag,” is the face he presents to the world—his self-portrait. In their artist statement, Hupp and Conlon write that graffiti is “a lifestyle, an addiction, a dysfunctional marriage of secrecy and fame, for better and for worse. Some see it as an insatiable appetite for destruction, but through this abstracted topography we find our creative vision and achieve our self-expression.”
In January of 2007, before the opening of “RECOGNIZE!” NPG web developer Benjamin Bloom sat down with Tim Conlon and Dave Hupp, and asked them a few questions. You can listen to the complete interview, and see their graffiti murals here.
BB: What makes your style your own, or differentiates it from other people?
TC (shown on right): I think, just of course, the letters—the name that you choose that’s going to separate you from anyone else. I guess style-wise, my style pretty much reflects mostly New York straight-letter style, or straight-letter wild-style. You know something that’s bar-letters, very readable, you can tell what it says—probably has a little Baltimore influence to it.
And there is some West Coast stuff that I’ve added to it, when I lived out in L.A. for a while. Some little tidbits and painting techniques I do, that I remember from out there. I’d say it’s pretty generic, but I’ve painted enough over the years so that people recognize it. Even if they just glance at it, they probably know it’s me before they read the letters. Same probably goes for Dave too.
DH (left): It’s just changed over the years. I don’t do a lot of connections. A lot of single-letter, bar-style—I want it to be readable. When it flies by I want Joe truck driver to be able to read it. You know, the average person. I don’t want it to be some wild crazy stuff that you can’t read. So usually each letter is separate. There maybe some simple connections, but just real bold bar-style letters.
I’m from Baltimore, so it’s got a Baltimore flair. But it’s got a lot of influence from a variety of people I hang with and know. I get influence from a lot of different things, and a lot of different people from all over.
BB: How do you feel about graffiti being in a museum?
DH: Well I’m glad to be alive and be in the Smithsonian. Because I guess not too long ago, you had to be dead to be in the Portrait Gallery, right?
BB: That’s true.
DH: So to be alive and be in it is good! It’s a sign of the times. Some people may say “hey you’re a sell-out.” I look at it like being a musician, and never making an album or putting a CD out. Why are you strumming on that guitar for twenty years, if you can’t make a buck, or be seen, or be heard? And this is a way to be seen and be heard. This is huge—I guess when I walk down that marble floor and through the pillars and see these huge panels affixed to the wall, I’ll be like “damn, that’s our stuff.”
For more on Tim Conlon and Dave Hupp, view the audio slideshow below. Tim and Dave take you step-by-step through the creation one of the exhibition’s murals.
AREK by Tim Conlon and Dave Hupp, 2007/Montana spray paint on Sintra panel/182.9 x 609.6 cm (72 x 240 in)/Tim Conlon and Dave Hupp
Con/AREK by Tim Conlon and Dave Hupp, 2007/Montana spray paint on Sintra panel/182.9 x 609.6 cm (72 x 240 in)/Tim Conlon and Dave Hupp
The National Portrait Gallery’s “One Life: KATE, A Centennial Celebration” is closing soon, so be sure to see the exhibition before September 28, its final day. In this blog post, NPG’s Amy Henderson, curator of “KATE,” bids farewell to this centennial celebration of Katharine Hepburn’s birth.
Katharine Hepburn was right—she was absolutely fascinating. She proved that again and again this year as “KATE” was visited by throngs of enthusiastic audiences. People clearly enjoyed seeing her four Best Actress Oscars, but I think they were particularly drawn by the wonderfully affectionate portrait by Everett Raymond Kinstler (above) that Hepburn deemed her “favorite.”
The ratty red sweater also had its fans, who understood with me that that well-worn personal artifact lent the exhibition something “real” of her spirit. And I was delighted to see how carefully visitors read the labels, most of which used Hepburn’s own words and resonated with her personality.
Oh, did I mention the color red, her favorite color?! The exhibition was a red showcase of Kate Color, instantly drawing the visitor onto the Hepburn stage.
One of the things that touched me most was a young student from Duke Ellington School of the Arts who used “KATE” as her selection for the Portrait Gallery’s 2008 Portraits Alive! program this summer. Chelsea Harrison, a marvelously talented actor, suffused herself into Hepburn’s personality and created a jaw-dropping characterization that left her audience (me among them) in awe. You could almost hear Hepburn chortling somewhere, saying “See? I told you I was fascinating….”
As visitors walk through the intertwining hallways of the National Portrait Gallery, they often come upon Grant and His Generals by Ole Peter Hansen Balling—the largest work in our collection. This portrait measures 10 x 16 feet and weighs 450 pounds! So exactly how did it get to its current location in the stairwell?
While the building underwent more than six years of renovation, Grant and His Generals was safely housed in an offsite storage facility. When it was time for the painting to be returned to the building, much of the space was still under construction. To move the painting in, a large crane was used to hoist it from Seventh Street onto the second-floor portico, and then into the building. A platform extending beyond the portico served as the landing point. Here, an NPG employee used a rope to help guide the painting onto the platform.
Grant and His Generals was meticulously reinstalled in its current location on the curved wall of the second-floor stairwell. First, a large scaffolding unit was built in the stairwell. Next, a tapeline was made on the wall so that the exact placement could be achieved.
Once all preparations were made, the painting was uncrated, hoisted by numerous people, and moved into place. The original aluminum strips that secured the painting to the wall were reattached, and the original custom-made curved frame was reinstalled. Grant and His Generals was then covered in plastic to protect it from dust until the National Portrait Gallery reopened on July 1, 2006, after being closed for renovation.
A large crane hoists Grant and His Generals from Seventh Street onto the second-floor portico.
Grant and His Generals by Ole Peter Hansen Balling, oil on canvas, 1865, National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, gift of Mrs. Harry Newton Blue in memory of her husband, Harry Newton Blue
This exhibition is presented by The Commission on Presidential Scholars, the Presidential Scholars Foundation, the National Portrait Gallery, and the National Foundation for Advancement in the Arts (NFAA). The Taylor Foundation is proud to fund the exhibition.
In this blog post, we highlight one of the young artists, Jennifer Liu of Highland, Maryland. Her piece “Adopted Suburbia: Laundry Day” (above) hangs in the exhibition. In her artist’s statement Ms. Liu writes:
Spawned from the vision of post–World War II families, the suburban lifestyle has always strived to be a man-made utopia. In the modern day and age, suburbia tends to consist of a landscape of cloned houses, obscenely green lawns, and shopping complexes that stretch beyond the horizon. With inhabitants either cooped in their sport utility vehicles or attached to the television screen or computer monitor, one can say that this is a cultural wasteland.
There are many ways, however, to entertain oneself in an average American suburban setting. I have discovered that my everyday encounters with my overactive imagination, sculpted by years of commercials, cartoons, and sugar have commingled together to fabricate my own suburban paradise.
At a young age, Jennifer Liu enjoyed the many processes of making art. From painting and photography to making music and movies, she has always taken the initiative to try something new. During high school, she began to take more art classes and became more involved with her art. As a junior, Jennifer entered a countywide student film festival and received first place for her short film. She has also been recognized as a Maryland Distinguished Scholar for Talent in the Arts and is a 2008 NFAA youngARTS Silver Award winner in photography.
A graduate of River Hill High School, Jennifer is still experimenting with different mediums. Many of her latest works include installations created from everyday materials, serving as an environment for her performance-based pieces. These performances are then documented using photography or video. Jennifer plans to attend Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore this coming fall.
Adopted Suburbia: Laundry Day/Jennifer Liu, 2007/Digital Color Print, 36 x 24in
Each Thursday a curator or historian from NPG brings visitors face-to-face with a portrait by offering their insight into one individual. Thursdays, 6 to 6:30 p.m. at the museum
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