Printer Friendly Version - Twenty-Seven Major Artists Showcased in Be Seen: Portrait Photography Since Stonewall

Racquel with Les Trois Femmes, chromogenic print, 2018, Mickalene Thomas. © Mickalene Thomas, Courtesy of the artist and Yancey Richardson. Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art: The Douglas Tracy Smith and Dorothy Potter Smith Fund

A new exhibition at the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art features 27 major artists who have used portraiture to challenge, subvert, and play with societal norms of gender and sexuality since the 1969 Stonewall Riots—an important turning point in the LGBTQ+ rights movement.

Leveraging the “reality effect”—the prevalent belief that photographs accurately depict reality—artists including Nan Goldin, Peter Hujar, Robert Mapplethorpe, Catherine Opie, Cindy Sherman, and Andy Warhol respond to how gender identity and sexual orientation were viewed historically and how they are lived today.

The more than 50 works of art in Be Seen: Portrait Photography Since Stonewall were selected with the goal of compelling the viewer to consider how people perform their identity through clothing, accessories, speech, and bodily expression, in an effort to be seen.

The exhibition opens Saturday, June 22 and will be on view at the museum, 600 Main Street, Hartford, through Sunday, Sept. 15, overlapping with Hartford’s celebration of Pride Fest on Saturday, Sept. 14. Events being offered in conjunction with the exhibit include Varla Jean Merman performing Under the Big Top on Sunday, June 23 at 7 p.m., and John Waters taking the stage for an evening of discussion, followed by a book signing and film screening of Cecil B. Demented, Saturday, June 29 at 7 p.m.

“This summer at the Wadsworth, we have seized the opportunity to celebrate the artistic accomplishments of many artists working in portraiture,” says Patricia Hickson, Emily Hall Tremaine curator of Contemporary Art at the Wadsworth. “The majority of the portraits in Be Seen are part of our collection, including 10 new additions initiated by the exhibition with the purpose of diversifying our holdings.”

Offerings in conjunction with Be Seen include a companion tour program, Out on View: LGBTQ+ Perspectives on the Collection, which connects visitors with queer subject matter throughout the collection galleries highlighting works of art from antiquity to contemporary. The tour takes place at the Wadsworth on Saturday, July 13 and Saturday, Aug. 24 with Professor Andrew Lear who has curated an accompanying Out on View mobile audio tour. There is also a mobile audio tour of works in Be Seen titled Be Heard, which provides insights from the exhibition’s artists and the local LGBTQ+ community. Both audio tours are available online via tap.thewadsworth.org. Photography sourced from an Instagram campaign and juried by Ricardo Reyes, Edith Dale Monson Gallery curator and director at University of Hartford, and Judith Thorpe, professor and MFA Program director at University of Connecticut, will be displayed as an adjunct to the exhibition. More information is available at www.thewadsworth.org.