Exhibits

exhibits

Eye to I: Self-Portraits from 1900 to Today November 4, 2018—August 18, 2019

This exhibition explores how American artists have chosen to portray themselves since the start of the last century. In the age where people are confronted with “selfies” that flood social media, this exhibit, which draws primarily from the National Portrait Gallery’s collection of self-portraits, examinees the fluidity of contemporary identity and reassess the significance of self-portraiture in relation to the country’s history and culture. More than 75 works will be on display by artists such as Josef Albers, Patricia Cronin, Imogen Cunningham, Elaine de Kooning, Edward Hopper, Joan Jonas, Jacob Lawrence, Alice Neel, Louise Nevelson, Diego Rivera, Lucas Samaras, Fritz Scholder, Roger Shimomura, Shahzia Sikander, and Martin Wong. Eye to I: Self-Portraits from 1900 to Today is curated by Brandon Brame Fortune, chief curator, National Portrait Gallery. The exhibition concludes the Portrait Gallery’s 50th anniversary celebrations, and an expanded, illustrated companion book will be published in spring 2019.

Modern American Realism Highlights from the Smithsonian’s Sara Roby Foundation Collection October 20, 2018—April 28, 2019

Edward Hopper, Cape Cod Morning, 1950. Oil on canvas, 34 1/8 x 40 1/4 inches. Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of the Sara Roby Foundation.

A selection of work from the permanent collection of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Modern American Realism includes the range of what can broadly be called modern realism—from sociopolitical to psychological, from satirical to surrealist. Drawn from works collected by the Sara Roby Foundation, the exhibition includes 44 paintings and sculptures from 1910 to 1980 by Will Barnet, Isabel Bishop, Paul Cadmus, Arthur Dove, Edward Hopper, Wolf Kahn, Yasuo Kuniyoshi, Jacob Lawrence, Reginald Marsh, and Honoré Sharrer, and others.

Sara Roby (1907-1986) believed that the best way to encourage the visual arts America was to acquire the works of living artists and exhibit them to the public. The Sara Roby Foundation began collecting American art in the mid-1950s, and during the next 30 years assembled a premier group of paintings and sculpture by the country’s leading figurative artists.

The resulting collection captures both the optimism and the apprehension of the years following World War II. Many of the works are movingly human, such as Dowager in a Wheelchair (1952) by Philip Evergood, while others, by artists such as Robert Vickrey, provoke us to decipher meanings imbedded in multifaceted andenigmatic scenes.

Sara Roby championed realism at a time when critics celebrated abstract expressionism and “action painting.” However, she was unwilling to be controlled by her own collecting criteria. In addition to obtaining masterpieces by Edward Hopper, Paul Cadmus, and their contemporaries, the Foundation showed cultural range by purchasing key works by Stuart Davis and Louise

Beaumont Newhall Self-Portrait, 1970, Gelatin silver print, National Portrait Gallery,

Smithsonian Institution.

Nevelson, and regional breadth by collecting works by Mark Tobey and Morris Graves, both preeminent Northwest Artists.

Yasuhiro Ishimoto: Someday, Chicago September 6—December 16, 2018

Yasuhiro Ishimoto: Someday, Chicago explores the work of American-born photographer Yasuhiro Ishimoto (1921–2012) through the lens of Chicago, where he lived for more than a decade and where he would often return throughout his life. Declared as one of the most influential photographers of Japan in the 20th century, Ishimoto also maintained deep ties to his adopted home city where he arrived in 1945 after having been interned during World War II. It was in Chicago where he first developed his uniquely modernist vision—both at the historic Institute of Design (ID) in dialogue with László Moholy-Nagy, Harry Callahan, Aaron Siskind, and other teachers there; and in the city’s streets, where he captured changes reflective of broader societal shifts happening across the United States. By exploring the impact of his work— and in particular of his Someday, Somewhere and Chicago, Chicago photograph series—this project suggests how Ishimoto spread his vision beyond Chicago and the United States, and into an international arena.

This exhibition, hosted by the DePaul Art Museum, is guest-curated by Jasmine Alinder, Associate Professor of History, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, and John Tain, Head of Research, Asia Art Archive, Hong Kong,

ArtDiction | 11 | November/December 2018