Opens July 15, 2025

All Kinds of People is the first installment in a series of permanent collection rotations that feature works organized within thematic areas. Drawn from the Tweed’s growing collection of about 11,000 objects, this rotation includes artists from the 17th century to the present day who approach portraiture and the depiction of people through the mediums of drawing, painting, sculpture, collage, photography, and printmaking. The title draws its name from a 1968 exhibition organized by influential curator Walter Hopps (1932 – 2005) at the Washington Gallery of Modern Art (Washington, DC). The salon-style exhibition of portraiture and figurative work was organized in response to the overwhelming predominance at the time of abstraction in contemporary culture. 

Here, visitors encounter a constellation of works that collapses the past and present, geography and generation. The arrangement also places portraits that have been displayed often in the museum alongside those that might not have found their way into a major exhibition, or have never been on view. Viewers are encouraged to be curious and open to new discoveries through the visual interplay between the works—or possibly consider a fresh perspective about a favorite or familiar portrait in the collection. 

A portrait, narrowly defined, is an artwork that captures the physical characteristics and personality or psychological state of the sitter. Before the invention of photography, drawn, painted, cast, engraved, or sculpted portraits were the primary methods to record a person’s likeness. Historically, having your portrait made was a privilege that was often directly tied to power, wealth, beauty, class, or status. Modern and contemporary artists often bring new approaches to portraiture that interrogate and reframe ideas around identity and representation and depict all kinds of people and lives who have been absent in the canon of art history. 

What kinds of people do you expect to see in portraits on view in art museums, and what faces are rarely, if ever, represented? What are the consequences of this exclusion? What impact do you think this has on the stories that are told?