Introducing The Center for Visual Biography

On May 12, 2016, leading scholars converged at the National Portrait Gallery to discuss the Center for Visual Biography. The Center for Visual Biography hopes to foster and engage with current research on portraiture, art, and history. It strives to support the study of Visual Biography and is interested in topics such as identity and biography as an historical narrative.

Members of the advisory board include both Smithsonian staff and a diverse array of outside scholars. Spearheaded by David C. Ward, Senior Historian and newly appointed Director of Scholarly Programs at the National Portrait Gallery, the Center for Visual Biography will increase the scholarly and academic programming at the National Portrait Gallery. National Portrait Gallery Commissioner Jane Kamensky, Professor of History and Pforzheimer Foundation Director of the Schlesinger Library at Harvard University, has also been instrumental since the center’s inception. At the May 12 meeting, members of the advisory board discussed future programming and the possibility of a book prize or fellowship and symposia.

The Center for Visual Biography’s inaugural initiative is the November 4 and 5 Richardson Symposium, organized by Dr. Gwendolyn DuBois Shaw and titled “Racial Masquerade in American Art and Culture.” The symposium will bring together scholars and artists who engage with the history of racial masquerade in their work while examining contemporary instances of racial masquerade in American culture and the ways in which performances of false identity continue to shape how we see ourselves and others. Keynote speaker Eric Lott, from the Graduate Center at CUNY, will begin the symposium, which will include speakers Mia Bagneris, Tulane University; Janet Catherine Berlo, University of Rochester; Michael Ray Charles, University of Houston; Anthony W. Lee, Mount Holyoke College; Beverly McIver, Duke University; and Christopher J. Smith, Texas Tech University; with introductions and moderation by Gwendolyn DuBois Shaw, University of Pennsylvania; Cherise Smith, University of Texas at Austin; and Jillian B. Vaum, University of Pennsylvania.

Free registration for the symposium can be found here.

Advisory Board Members:

Yunte Huang is a Guggenheim Fellow and a professor of English at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

Jane Kamensky is professor of history and Pforzheimer Foundation Director of the Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study.

Kate Lemay is a historian at the National Portrait Gallery.

David Lubin the Charlotte C. Weber Professor of Art at Wake Forest University.

Asma Naeem is associate curator of prints, drawings, and time-based media art at the National Portrait Gallery.

Lauren Redniss teaches at Parsons the New School for Design in New York City and is the author of three works of visual nonfiction.

Martha Sandweiss is professor of history at Princeton University.

Gwendolyn DuBois Shaw is associate professor of American art and affiliated faculty in Africana Studies, Cinema Studies, and Gender Studies and Women’s Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. 

David C. Ward is the senior historian and director of scholarly programs for the National Portrait Gallery.

Robert Sean Wilentz is the George Henry Davis 1886 Professor of American History at Princeton University.