ARTalk: Portraiture History, Art, and the Human Experience 

Professor Kevin Muller, Ph.d. will discuss the history of portraiture and remark on select works in the exhibition

Due to the ubiquitous presence of photographic images in our daily lives, we tend to assume that a true portrait records an individual's unique physiognomy. But as the exhibit Human Presence: Faces, Figures, Crowds demonstrates, meaningful and insightful portraiture can take many forms.

This talk explores the varied approaches artists working across diverse historical, cultural, and geographic contexts have employed to render their sitters. From the naturalistic to the abstract, from the literal to the metaphorical, we will situate works in the exhibit within a longer history of portrait images that record, engage, and reveal our humanity.