WASHINGTON, DC.- The Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery presents the first major museum exhibition showing how questions of gender and sexual identity have dramatically shaped the creation of modern American portraiture. “Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture” will be on view at the museum Oct. 30 through Feb. 13, 2011. Long before the advent of today’s gay and lesbian movement there were many examples of art—paintings, sculptures, water colors, prints and photographs—that acknowledged a variety of sexual identities. This exhibition features artists and sitters with a range of identities, from exclusively same-sex to exclusively heterosexual.
“Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture” will consider such themes as the role of sexual difference in depicting modern Americans, how artists have explored the definition of sexuality and gender, how major the