The National Portrait Gallery is pleased to announce a series of Zoom webinars presented by PORTAL, the Portrait Gallery’s Scholarly Center, which promotes the study of American portraiture and visual biography. Its symposia, fellowships, meetings, and research situate American portraiture and visual biography within larger social, historical, economic, and political frameworks.

The first panel, taking place in late June, covers the watershed exhibition Hide/Seek while the second, occurring in early July, is a conversation with artists María Magdalena Campos-Pons and Jeffrey Gibson on identity and reinserting BIPOC histories into museum spaces.

Pre-registration is required for both webinars, which are free to attend.

*    *    *

Hide/Seek: Portraits for LGBTQ+ Pride Month

Join curators Jonathan Katz and David Ward, along with the Portrait Gallery’s Senior Historian Gwendolyn DuBois Shaw, for a discussion on the landmark exhibition Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture (2010).

When Hide/Seek premiered ten years ago, it became the first major museum show to take on the issue of LGBTQ+ subjectivity in portraiture. It also spawned a censorship controversy when central Smithsonian leadership chose to remove one of the works from the exhibition. The panelists will examine the intent behind the exhibition and discuss the process of bringing it to the public, the controversy that surrounded it, and its legacy. They will also talk about some of the art that made this exhibition so remarkable.

When: Tuesday, June 23, at 5pm (EDT)
Where: Online via Zoom
Registration Required: bit.ly/hideseekNPG

This program is part of the Tommie L. Pegues and Donald A. Capoccia Conversation Series on LGBTQ+ portraiture.

*    *    *

IDENTIFY: Jeffrey Gibson and María Magdalena Campos Pons with Dorothy Moss

Join Portrait Gallery curator Dorothy Moss for a conversation with artists María Magdalena Campos-Pons and Jeffrey Gibson about issues of identity and strategies for reinserting BIPOC histories into museum spaces through live performance and object making. Campos-Pons developed a piece for the Portrait Gallery’s IDENTIFY performance art series in 2016 and Gibson created one in 2019.

When: Tuesday, July 7, at 5pm (EDT)
Where: Online via Zoom
Registration Required: bit.ly/identifyNPG

This program is part of the Greenberg Steinhauser Forum in American Portraiture Conversation Series.