National Portrait Gallery
Portraiture Now: Communities
November 6, 2009 – July 5, 2010
How do we define community today? Through new electronic networking, our connections are increasingly widespread; yet, we are still drawn to the idea of small communities and face-to-face interaction. Three artists—Rose Frantzen, Jim Torok, and Rebecca Westcott—explore the idea of community in portraits of friends, neighbors, or family. On view are portraits of people from Frantzen's hometown Maquoketa, Iowa, that were created over a 12-month period; Torok's meticulous small-scale panel portraits of fellow New York artists and a series documenting three generations of a single family; and full-length images of Westcott's peers, often Philadelphians in their 20s.
Trenton Doyle Hancock, © Jim Jorok
