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Aug. 27, 2021–May 30, 2022
Credit information: “Resident Alien” by Hung Liu, oil on canvas, 1988. Collection of the San Jose Museum of Art; gift of the Lipman Family Foundation. © Hung Liu
The National Portrait Gallery will present the first retrospective of portraiture by the internationally acclaimed artist Hung Liu (b. 1948 in Changchun, China). Featuring more than 50 paintings, photographs and drawings, “Portraits of Promised Lands” is the first major presentation of Liu’s work the East Coast. It is also the first time the Portrait Gallery will honor an Asian American woman with a solo show. The exhibition will examine Liu’s powerful art, from her earliest photographs and drawings made in the early 1970s to her recent large-scale paintings. Having lived through wars, political revolutions, exile and displacement, Liu presents a complex, multifaceted picture of an Asian Pacific American experience. The exhibition is curated by Dorothy Moss, curator of painting and sculpture and coordinating curator for the Smithsonian American Women’s History Initiative. It will be accompanied by a catalogue, published by the National Portrait Gallery in association with Yale University Press. “Hung Liu: Portraits of Promised Lands” has been made possible through the generosity of an anonymous donor; Fred M. Levin, the Shenson Foundation, in memory of Nancy Livingston Levin and Ben and A. Jess Shenson; and the contributions of many other supporters. In addition, the project received federal support from the Asian Pacific American Initiatives Pool, administered by the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center, and the Smithsonian American Women’s History Initiative.
A virtual press preview with the artist and the curator will be held over Zoom on Aug. 26 from 10 a.m. to 11:00 a.m. ET. RSVP to kellyb@si.edu.
