Friday, January 3, 2020

"The Obama Portraits" coming from Princeton University Press in February 2020


The Obama Portraits
Princeton University Press


The Obama Portraits (Publication Date: February 11, 2020) is a reception history and historicization of the meaning of Barack and Michelle’s portraiture by Kehinde Wiley and Amy Sherald. 

The book features
  • A reversible cover so that buyers can either feature Barack’s portrait or Michelle’s 
  • Never-before-seen behind-the-scenes photographs of the artists at work
  • Photographs the unveiling ceremony by the Obama’s photographer Pete Souza
  • Essays about how Wiley and Sherald were commissioned for the project, how the National Portrait Gallery’s visitors doubled as a result of these portraits, the unprecedented responses to the portraits and their legacy in African American art
  • A transcript of the unveiling ceremony
The book’s contributors include

  • Taína Caragol is curator of painting and sculpture and Latino art and history at the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, DC.
  • Dorothy Moss is curator of painting and sculpture at the National Portrait Gallery, where she also directs the Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition and serves as coordinating curator of the Smithsonian American Women's History Initiative. 
  • Richard J. Powell is the John Spencer Bassett Professor of Art and Art History at Duke University and the author of Cutting a Figure: Fashioning Black Portraiture and Black Art: A Cultural History, among other books. 
  • Kim Sajet is director of the National Portrait Gallery.

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