National Portrait Gallery
UnSeen: Our Past in a New Light, Ken Gonzales-Day and Titus Kaphar
March 23, 2018 – January 6, 2019
The exhibition highlights the work of two leading contemporary artists who grapple with the under- and misrepresentation of certain minorities in portraiture and American history. Gonzales-Day and Kaphar illuminate the contributions and sacrifices people of color made during the country’s founding. Kaphar defaces, cuts, and peels back his paintings to show how portraits of American historical figures, such as Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson, have traditionally coded racial difference, hid systemic prejudices, and omitted the presence of African Americans. Gonzales-Day photographs portrait busts, sculptures, and ethnographic casts in European and American museums to create installations that reveal how scientific studies, artistic conventions, and collecting tendencies have reinforced inappropriate notions of race and “Otherness.” Together, the work of these two artists demonstrates how the absence of certain figures and communities in art has preempted their recognition in national history, and, in the process, reclaims a space for them in the art historical context.
The Portrait Gallery curators for this exhibition are Curator of Painting and Sculpture and Latino Art and History, Taína Caragol, and Curator of Prints, Drawings and Media Arts, Asma Naeem.
Columbus Day Painting, Titus Kaphar, oil and mixed media on canvas, 2014. Dr. Robert B. Feldman, © Titus Kaphar. Courtesy of the artist and Jack Shainman Gallery, New York.
