Thomas Cowperthwaite Eakins (American, 1844-1916), Walt Whitman, 1891 (printed 1979). Platinum print, 10.3 x 12.2 cm, National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, NPG.79.65.

Peter Hujar, (American,1934-1987), Susan Sontag, 1975, Gelatin silver print, 37.1 x 37.6 cm, National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. © The Peter Hujar Archive LLC, courtesy Mathew Marks Gallery, New York .

Keith Haring (American, 1958-1990), Unfinished Painting, 1989, Acrylic on canvas, 100.0 x 100.0 cm, Courtesy of Katia Perlstein, Brussels, Belgium © Keith Haring Foundation.

Florine Stettheimer (American, 1871-1944), Portrait of Marcel Duchamp, circa 1925, Oil on canvas, 61.6 x 62.2 cm, Gift from the Estate of Ettie and Florine Stettheimer, Michele and Donald D'Amour Museum of Fine Arts, Springfield, Massachusetts, Photography by David Stansbury.

Robert Rauschenberg (American,1925-2008), Canto XIV [from XXXIV Drawings for Dante's Inferno (including KAR)], 1959-1960 Offset lithographs, edition 202/300, 36.5 x 28.9 cm, The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, Gift of Marcia Simon Weisman, Photo by Brian Forrest; Art © Estate of Robert Rauschenberg/ Licensed by VAGA, New York, New York.

Minor White (American, 1908-1976), Tom Murphy (San Francisco), 1948, Gelatin silver print, 11.7 x 9.2 cm, The Minor White Archive, Princeton University Art Museum, Bequest of Minor White, MWA 48-136, © Trustees of Princeton University.

Thomas Eakins (American, 1844 -1916), Salutat, 1898, Oil on canvas, 127.0 x 101.6 cm, Addison Gallery of American Art, Phillips Academy, Andover, Massachusetts, Gift of anonymous donor, 1930.18.

Brooklyn Museum
200 Eastern Parkway
718-638-5000
Brooklyn
Hide/Seek:
Difference and Desire
in American Portraiture
November 18, 2011-February 12, 2012

Hide/Seek includes works in a wide range of media created over the course of 100 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.

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, is view at Brooklyn Museum. With the cooperation of the National Portrait Gallery, the Brooklyn Museum has reconstituted the exhibition in concert with Tacoma Art Museum.

Brooklyn Museum Director Arnold L. Lehman says, “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 commentary on marginalized cultural history, Hide/Seek offers an unprecedented survey of more than a century of American art. Beginning with late 19th-century works by Thomas Eakins and John Singer Sargent, the exhibition traces the subjects of gender and sexuality with approximately 100 works by masters including Romaine Brooks, George Bellows, Marsden Hartley, and Georgia O’Keeffe. It continues through the postwar 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, postmodernism, and themes of identity in contemporary art.

The exhibition continues through the end of the 20th century with major works by artists including Keith Haring, Glenn Ligon, Nan Goldin, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, and Catherine Opie.

The Brooklyn presentation features 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 Bernice 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 also includes 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.

Marsden Hartley (American, 1877-1943), Painting No. 47, Berlin, 1914-15, Oil on canvas, 00.1 x 81.3 cm, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.; Gift of Joseph H. Hirshhorn, 1972.

Beauford Delaney (American, 1901-1979), James Baldwin, 1963, Pastel on paper, 64.8 x 49.8 cm, National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, NPG.98.25.

Cass Bird (American, born 1974), I Look Just Like My Daddy, 2004, Chromogenic print, 101.6 x 76.2 cm, Brooklyn Museum, Gift of the Prints and Photographs Council and the Robert A. Levinson Fund , © Cass Bird.

Berenice Abbott (American, 1898-1991), Janet Flanner, 1927, Gelatin silver print, 24.1 x 18.7 cm, Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. © Berenice Abbott/Commerce Graphics, New York.

Romaine Brooks (American, 1874-1970), Self-Portrait, 1923, Oil on canvas, 117.5 x 68.3 cm, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C. Gift of the artist.

Alice Neel (American, 1900-1984), Frank O’Hara, 1960, Oil on canvas, 85.7 x 40.6 x 2.5 cm, National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, NPG.96.128, Gift of Hartley S. Neel. © Estate of Alice Neel.