On February 17, the Springfield Museums will welcome The Outwin 2022: American Portraiture Today – one of only four museums in the country to host this major exhibition organized by the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery. It will be on display until May 5, 2024.
“We are thrilled to host the latest iteration of this celebrated and important exhibition,” said Heather Haskell-Burns, Vice President at the Springfield Museums and Director of its art museums. Three years ago, the Museums hosted The Outwin 2019 — also in the D’Amour Museum of Fine Arts.
“Visitors will be intrigued, moved, and delighted by the varied approaches to portraiture that foreground the vibrancy and relevance being pursued by American artists today,” she added.
The Outwin 2022 is the culminating exhibition from the most recent Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition, which every three years invites emerging and established artists who are living and working in the United States to submit a recent portrait to a panel of experts chosen by the Portrait Gallery.
More than 2,700 works were submitted for the 2022 competition, covering a variety of artistic approaches — painting, drawing, sculpture, photography, time-based media, textiles, and performance art. Entrants were encouraged to submit work that moved beyond traditional definitions of portraiture and engaged with the social and political landscape of our time.
“The Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition was founded to support the next wave of contemporary portraiture in the United States,” said Kim Sajet, director of the National Portrait Gallery. “The diversity of this edition’s entries, from geographic origin to subject matter and media, reflects both the multifaceted story of the United States today and the unique perspectives and lenses through which contemporary artists see that story.”
The jurors ultimately selected 42 works for the show, from artists representing 14 states, Washington D.C., and Puerto Rico. The finalists include New England artists David Hilliard (Boston, MA), Rania Matar (Brookline, MA), Josephine Sittenfeld (Providence, RI) and Ilene Spiewak (West Stockbridge, MA).
Jurors for the 2022 competition were Kathleen Ash-Milby, curator of Native American art, Portland Art Museum, Oregon; Catherine Opie, artist, professor of photography and chair of the art department at the University of California, Los Angeles; Ebony G. Patterson, artist, Chicago and Kingston, Jamaica; and John Yau, poet, critic and professor of critical studies, Mason Gross School of the Arts, Rutgers University, New Jersey.
Taína Caragol, the National Portrait Gallery’s curator of painting, sculpture, and Latinx art and history, and former curators Leslie Ureña and Dorothy Moss also served on the committee. Caragol is the director of the 2022 Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition and co-curated the exhibit with Ureña.
This exhibition is accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue, available at the Hanmer Museum Store.
This exhibition has been organized by the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery. The competition and exhibition are made possible by the Virginia Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition Endowment, established by Virginia Outwin Boochever and sustained by her family.
The Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery tells the multifaceted story of the United States through the individuals who have shaped American culture. Spanning the visual arts, performing arts and new media, the Portrait Gallery portrays poets and presidents, visionaries and villains, actors and activists whose lives tell the nation’s story. The National Portrait Gallery is located at Eighth and G streets N.W., Washington, D.C. Smithsonian Information: (202) 633-1000. Connect with the museum at npg.si.edu and on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube.
The Springfield showing of the exhibition is generously sponsored by The Colvest Group, LTD, William and Patricia Kelliher, the M&T Charitable Foundation, the Springfield Cultural Council, and St. Germain Investment Management.
Image: She Waited for Her Family from this Point in Place; artist: Khánh Lê; acrylic paint, paper, and plastic jewels on canvas, 2021; collection of the artist © Khánh H. Lê