Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture, November 18, 2011 through February 12, 2012 (Image: DIG_E_2011_Hide_Seek_01_Prelims_PS4.jpg Brooklyn Museum photograph, 2011)
Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture, November 18, 2011 through February 12, 2012 (Image: DIG_E_2011_Hide_Seek_02_Prelims_PS4.jpg Brooklyn Museum photograph, 2011)
Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture, November 18, 2011 through February 12, 2012 (Image: DIG_E_2011_Hide_Seek_03_Prelims_PS4.jpg Brooklyn Museum photograph, 2011)
Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture, November 18, 2011 through February 12, 2012 (Image: DIG_E_2011_Hide_Seek_04_Prelims_PS4.jpg Brooklyn Museum photograph, 2011)
Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture, November 18, 2011 through February 12, 2012 (Image: DIG_E_2011_Hide_Seek_05_Prelims_PS4.jpg Brooklyn Museum photograph, 2011)
Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture, November 18, 2011 through February 12, 2012 (Image: DIG_E_2011_Hide_Seek_06_Prelims_PS4.jpg Brooklyn Museum photograph, 2011)
Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture, November 18, 2011 through February 12, 2012 (Image: DIG_E_2011_Hide_Seek_07_Prelims_PS4.jpg Brooklyn Museum photograph, 2011)
Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture, November 18, 2011 through February 12, 2012 (Image: DIG_E_2011_Hide_Seek_08_Prelims_PS4.jpg Brooklyn Museum photograph, 2011)
Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture, November 18, 2011 through February 12, 2012 (Image: DIG_E_2011_Hide_Seek_09_Prelims_PS4.jpg Brooklyn Museum photograph, 2011)
Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture, November 18, 2011 through February 12, 2012 (Image: DIG_E_2011_Hide_Seek_10_Prelims_PS4.jpg Brooklyn Museum photograph, 2011)
Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture, November 18, 2011 through February 12, 2012 (Image: DIG_E_2011_Hide_Seek_11_Prelims_PS4.jpg Brooklyn Museum photograph, 2011)
Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture, November 18, 2011 through February 12, 2012 (Image: DIG_E_2011_Hide_Seek_12_Prelims_PS4.jpg Brooklyn Museum photograph, 2011)
Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture, November 18, 2011 through February 12, 2012 (Image: DIG_E_2011_Hide_Seek_13_Prelims_PS4.jpg Brooklyn Museum photograph, 2011)
Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture
-
HIDE/SEEK Difference and Desire in American Portraiture
The first major museum exhibition to focus on sexual difference in modern American portraiture, HIDE/SEEK: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture presents new perspectives on American art, the nature of modern portraiture, and the multifaceted role that sexuality and gender have played in modern art. Featuring works by some of the most important figures in modern and contemporary art, HIDE/SEEK explores the role that sexual identity has played in cultural expressions through more than a hundred works in a range of media.
From early modern works by realist painters to contemporary conceptual works, HIDE/SEEK follows the thread of often coded expressions of sexual identity, pointing out connections between stylistic innovation and marginalization, social history and art history. The works on view range from early twentieth-century paintings in which artists developed visual codes and other strategies to veil sexual themes, to works by artists responding to the Stonewall riots of 1969 and the AIDS epidemic in the 1980s and beyond. That so many of the artists in this exhibition, from Eakins to Warhol, are touchstones in the history of American art is clear evidence that exchange among people of differing sexualities has been the rule, not the exception, in American culture. HIDE/SEEK tells a story of artistic and cultural creativity that has been hidden in plain sight for the last century.
HIDE/SEEK: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture was originally organized by the National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, and has been reorganized by the Brooklyn Museum and the Tacoma Art Museum. The original presentation was co-curated by David C. Ward, National Portrait Gallery, and Jonathan D. Katz, director of the doctoral program in visual studies at the State University of New York in Buffalo. The Brooklyn Museum presentation is coordinated by Tricia Laughlin Bloom, Project Curator.
-
May 20, 2011
Brooklyn, NY Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture, the first major museum exhibition to explore how gender and sexual identity have shaped the creation of American portraiture, organized by and presented at the National Portrait Gallery last fall, will be on view at the Brooklyn Museum from November 18, 2011, through February 12, 2012. With the cooperation of the National Portrait Gallery, the Brooklyn Museum has reconstituted the exhibition in concert with the Tacoma Art Museum, where it will be on view from March 17 through June 10, 2012.
Hide/Seek includes works in a wide range of media created over the course of one hundred years that reflect a variety of sexual identities and the stories of several generations. The exhibition also highlights the influence of gay and lesbian artists who often developed new visual strategies to code and disguise their subjects’ sexual identities, as well as their own. Hide/Seek considers such themes as the role of sexual difference in depicting modern Americans, how artists have explored the definition of sexuality and gender, how major themes in modern art—especially abstraction—were influenced by marginalization, and how art has reflected society’s changing attitudes.
Announcing the Brooklyn presentation, Museum Director Arnold L. Lehman states, “From the moment I first learned about this extraordinary exhibition in its planning stages, presenting it in Brooklyn has been a priority. It is an important chronicle of a neglected dimension of American art and a brilliant complement and counterpoint to Youth and Beauty: Art of the American Twenties, a touring exhibition organized by the Brooklyn Museum, also on view this fall.”
In addition to its commentary on a marginalized cultural history, Hide/Seek offers an unprecedented survey of more than a century of American art. Beginning with late nineteenth-century works by Thomas Eakins and John Singer Sargent, the exhibition traces the subject of gender and sexuality with approximately one hundred works by masters including Romaine Brooks, George Bellows, Marsden Hartley, and Georgia O’Keeffe. It continues through the postwar periods with works by Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg, Agnes Martin, and Andy Warhol. The exhibition addresses the impact of the Stonewall Riots of 1969, the AIDS epidemic, and the advent of postmodernism and themes of identity in contemporary art.
The exhibition continues through the end of the twentieth century with major works by artists including Keith Haring, Glenn Ligon, Nan Goldin, Félix González-Torres, and Catherine Opie.
The Brooklyn presentation will feature nearly all of the works included in the National Portrait Gallery exhibition. Among them are rarely seen works by Charles Demuth, whose better-known industrialized landscapes are on view in Youth and Beauty; a poignant portrait of New Yorker writer Janet Flanner wearing two masks, taken by photographer Berenice Abbott; Andrew Wyeth’s painting of a young neighbor standing nude in a wheat field, much like Botticelli’s Venus emerging from her shell; Robert Mapplethorpe’s photograph riffing on the classic family portrait, in which a leather-clad Brian Idley is seated on a wingback chair shackled to his whip-wielding partner, Lyle Heeter; and Cass Bird’s photographic portrait of a friend staring out from under a cap emblazoned with the words “I Look Just Like My Daddy.” The exhibition will also include David Wojnarowicz’s A Fire in My Belly, an unfinished film the artist created between 1985 and 1987.
The original presentation was co-curated by David C. Ward, National Portrait Gallery historian, and Jonathan Katz, director of the doctoral program in visual studies at the State University of New York in Buffalo.
At the Brooklyn Museum the exhibition has been coordinated by Tricia Laughlin Bloom, Project Curator. Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture has been generously supported by The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts.
Additional support has been provided by the Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation.
Press Area of Website
View Original -
September 1, 2011
Press Preview Thursday November 17, 11 a.m. until 2 p.m.
HIDE/SEEK: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture, the first major museum exhibition to explore how gender and sexual identity have shaped the creation of American portraiture, organized by and presented at the National Portrait Gallery last fall, will be on view at the Brooklyn Museum from November 18, 2011, through February 12, 2012. With the cooperation of the National Portrait Gallery, the Brooklyn Museum has reconstituted the exhibition in concert with the Tacoma Art Museum, where it will be on view from March 17 through June 10, 2012.
HIDE/SEEK includes approximately a hundred works in a wide range of media created over the course of one hundred years that reflect a variety of sexual identities and the stories of several generations. Highlighting the influence of gay and lesbian artists, many of whom developed new visual strategies to code and disguise their subjects’ sexual identities as well as their own, HIDE/SEEK considers such themes as the role of sexual difference in depicting modern Americans, how artists have explored the definition of sexuality and gender, how major themes in modern art—especially abstraction—have been influenced by marginalization, and how art has reflected society’s changing attitudes.
Announcing the Brooklyn presentation, Museum Director Arnold L. Lehman states, “From the moment I first learned about this extraordinary exhibition in its planning stages, presenting it in Brooklyn has been a priority. It is an important chronicle of a neglected dimension of American art and a brilliant complement and counterpoint to Youth and Beauty: Art of the American Twenties, a touring exhibition organized by the Brooklyn Museum, also on view this fall.”
In addition to its commentary on a marginalized cultural history, HIDE/SEEK offers an unprecedented survey of more than a century of American art. Beginning with late nineteenth-century portraits by Thomas Eakins and John Singer Sargent, it includes works from the first half of the 1900s by such masters as Romaine Brooks, George Bellows, Marsden Hartley, and Georgia O’Keeffe; the exhibition continues through the postwar period with works by Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg, Agnes Martin, and Andy Warhol, and concludes with major works by late twentieth-century artists such as Keith Haring, Glenn Ligon, Nan Goldin, Félix González-Torres, and Catherine Opie.
The Brooklyn presentation will feature nearly all of the works included in the National Portrait Gallery exhibition. Among them are rarely seen paintings by Charles Demuth, whose better-known industrialized landscapes are on view in the Brooklyn Museum exhibition Youth and Beauty; a poignant portrait of New Yorker writer Janet Flanner wearing two masks, taken by photographer Berenice Abbott; Andrew Wyeth’s painting of a young neighbor standing nude in a wheat field, much like Botticelli’s Venus emerging from her shell; Robert Mapplethorpe’s photograph riffing on the classic family portrait, in which a leather-clad Brian Ridley is seated on a wingback chair shackled to his whip-wielding partner, Lyle Heeter; and Cass Bird’s photographic portrait of a friend staring out from under a cap emblazoned with the words “I look Just Like My Daddy.” The exhibition will also include David Wojnarowicz’s A Fire in My Belly, an unfinished film the artist created between 1986 and 1987.
A wide range of public programs will be presented in conjunction with HIDE/SEEK, among them a two-part symposium that will explore themes and issues related to the exhibition. The first panel will examine the complex roles, responsibilities, and challenges that cultural institutions face when presenting “controversial” works of art. A second panel will discuss representations of identity and sexuality in art.
HIDE/SEEK: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture was originally organized by the National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, and has been reorganized by the Brooklyn Museum and the Tacoma Art Museum. The original presentation was co-curated by David C. Ward, National Portrait Gallery, and Jonathan D. Katz, director of the doctoral program in visual studies at the State University of New York in Buffalo. The Brooklyn Museum presentation is coordinated by Tricia Laughlin Bloom, Project Curator.
The Brooklyn presentation is sponsored by Ford Foundation.
Other generous support has been provided by The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Barbara and Richard Moore, The Calamus Foundation, the Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation, the May and Samuel Rudin Family Foundation, Inc., Donald A. Capoccia and Tommie Pegues, the Steven A. and Alexandra M. Cohen Foundation, Inc., Leslie and David Puth, Allison Grover and Susie Scher, and Tom Healy and Fred Hochberg.
New York magazine is media sponsor.
Press Area of Website
View Original
