Join us for a live gallery view of Faces of the League, our current exhibition on display in the Phyllis Harriman Mason Gallery, led by curator Anki King, with special guests and League instructors, Ellen Eagle and Jerry Weiss.
Faces of the League features 60 portraits from the League’s permanent collection, with a special focus on works that display a personal connection between sitter and artist, and a less formal air than in traditionally commissioned portraits. Anki King will be on-site at the gallery, personally bringing viewers through the exhibition as they tune in live and explaining the history behind featured pieces in the collection. Instructors Ellen Eagle and Jerry Weiss will share information about their personal connections to some of these works and speak about how the history of portraiture plays a role in their work and in the art world at large today.
This exhibition includes rarely seen works by previous League instructors and students as well as other artists with connections to the League. Of the 218 portraits in the League’s collection, the 60 works selected all vary stylistically, and represent the state of portraiture from 1850 to the present day.
Throughout history, artists have attempted to represent the human condition by capturing the expressions of the human face. In the 19th century, as photography became popular, delivering an exact likeness of the subject became less important. Beginning in the 1850s, with Impressionism, and again in the 1920s, with Expressionism, experimentation and the quest to find a livelier way of capturing the face changed the history of portraiture forever. Faces of the League exposes this art-historical shift in how the human face is perceived and has been captured by artists.
Top: Dorothy Dehner, “Portrait of Wilhemina Weber Furlong”, 1931, oil on canvas. Left: Ellen Eagle, “Self-portrait”, pastel. Right: Jerry Weiss, “Self-portrait”, oil on canvas
Click here to read our full press release. For questions regarding this event, please email Allison at [email protected]