Portraits do more than record a person’s appearance. Through portraiture, artists can make powerful and nuanced statements about a subject’s status, importance, character, or beauty. They can also use the conventions of the form to comment on themselves, on art, and on society.
Ranging from intimate snapshots to elaborately staged homages, each portrait in this section is a critical intervention into stories told through art history. These works prompt us to contemplate a variety of questions: Whose image is shown? Whose gaze is invoked? How do we read portraits to think about the past?
These highlights were part of WHO SAYS, WHO SHOWS, WHAT COUNTS: Thinking about History with The Block’s Collection, a 2021 exhibition that explored how art, artists, and museums engage with narratives of the past. To learn more about other artworks and key themes in the exhibition, check out Institutions Critiqued, Place and Memory, and Reframing the Past.
