Who Are They? Who Am I?

Portraits of Artists and Artist Self-Portraits

from the Permanent Collection

June 9 – October 7, 2023

Who Are They?/Who Am I? is drawn from the museum’s collection, which holds several hundred artworks that can be understood as portraits. This expansive exhibition presents portraits and self-portraits of and by a wide range of artists such as stage and screen actors, authors, composers, dancers, fashion designers, filmmakers, musicians, visual artists, and writers, all from different eras and depicted in a variety of media including paintings, drawings, photographs, sculpture, and prints.

Artworks vary from highly resolved formal portraits to works better described as informal sketches or snapshots and even more conceptual portraits, and are more personal or intimate. They range in date from the eighteenth to twenty-first centuries. Many are insightful, in various ways revealing information about the artist’s choices as well as portraying their subjects. Using a variety of visual approaches, the portraits capture the subjects’ appearance, mood, character, information about their time and environment, and they sometimes even tell stories.

Who Are They?

Works in this category focus on portraits of other artists. This, the larger section, includes over one hundred artworks, some of which are listed below by artist/subject.

Richard Avedon/Herman Wouk, Peggy Bacon/Marsden Hartley, Leonard Baskin/Odilon Redon, Cecil Beaton/Sonje Heni, Brassaï/Henri Matisse, Robert Capa/Pablo Picasso and Françoise Gilot, William Claxton/Chet Baker and Liliane Rovère, Thomas Cornell/Michelangelo, Eileen Darby/Lee J. Cobb, Ralph Bartlett Goddard/Charles Dickens, Walker Evans/James Agee, Philip Halsman/Marilyn Monroe, Yousuf Karsh/Georgia O’Keeffe, James Lechay/Beauford Delaney, Jacques Lubin/Jacques Callot, Linda McCartney/Bob Dylan, John Minihan/Samuel Beckett, Barbara Pollack/ William Pope.L, Eli Reed/Joan Baez, Arthur Rothstein/John Marin, David Seltzer/Jack Kerouac, Rena Small/Jean-Michel Basquait, Steven Speliotis/John Cage, Carl Sprinchorn/Jane Eyre, Joyce Tenneson/Dame Judi Dench, William Weegee/Eddie Cantor, Marguerite Zorach/Harry Hathaway.

The Who Am I?

Art in this category focuses on self-portraits, including artists listed below.

Sigund Abeles, Jack Beal, Joseph Beuys, Ashley Bryan, Eugene Francois Deveria, Fritz Eichenberg, Robert Farber, Robert Feintuch, Donna Ferrato, Samuel Fosso, Jay Gould, Lily Harmon, Anne Harris, Charlie Hewitt, Frances Hodsden, Brad Kahlhamer, John Muench, John O’Reilly, Rona Pondick, Claire Seidl, Hollis Sigler, Joyce Treiman, Beth Van Hoesen, Claire Van Vliet, Jacques Villon, Xu Bing.