The Outwin: American Portraiture Today opens at Orlando Museum of Art
Featuring 42 portraits by contemporary artists as finalists of the 2022 Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition
Orlando – February 28, 2023 — The Orlando Museum of Art presents “The Outwin: American Portraiture Today,” a major exhibition from the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery featuring the finalists of its sixth triennial Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition. The exhibition will be on view from April 8, 2023, through October 8, 2023. Every three years, artists living and working in the United States are invited to submit one of their recent portraits to a panel of experts chosen by the Portrait Gallery. In 2022, 42 works were selected from over 2,700 entries in a variety of media, including painting, drawing, sculpture, photography, time-based media, textiles, and performance art. The resulting presentation reflects the compelling and diverse approaches that today’s artists are using to tell the American story through portraiture. Finalists have come from 14 states, Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico.
“The Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition was founded to support the next wave of contemporary portraiture in the United States,” said Kim Sajet, director of the National Portrait Gallery. “The diversity of this edition’s entries, from geographic origin to subject matter and media, reflects both the multifaceted story of the United States today and the unique perspectives and lenses through which contemporary artists see that story. Produced in the past three years, it is no surprise that the art provides a powerful affirmation of the human experience focused on the pain of the COVID-19 pandemic, demands for social justice, personal isolation, familial ties, community support, love, and loss.”
The competition’s first-prize winner, Alison Elizabeth Taylor of Brooklyn, N.Y., created a portrait titled “Anthony Cuts under the Williamsburg Bridge, Morning” (2020), in which she depicts Brooklyn-based hair groomer Anthony Payne in a process that Taylor developed and named “marquetry hybrid.” Using vivid paints, inkjet prints, and the natural grains of over 100 veneers, Taylor created the multilayered portrait after encountering Payne in her neighborhood. With his workplace shuttered as a result of the pandemic, Payne was offering donation-based haircuts to support Black Lives Matter, and Taylor was struck by the way he embodied perseverance and solidarity. She made drawings of him from life and used those, along with photographs, to develop the portrait’s composition. She received a cash award of $25,000 and a commission to create a portrait of a living individual for the Portrait Gallery’s permanent collection. Previous first-prize winners are David Lenz (2006), Dave Woody (2009), Bo Gehring (2013), Amy Sherald (2016), and Hugo Crosthwaite (2019).
Second prize was awarded to Tom Jones of Madison, Wisconsin, who submitted a photograph embellished with beads, rhinestones, and shells titled “Elizah Leonard” (from the series “Strong Unrelenting Spirits”) (2019). Third prize was awarded to Pao Houa Her of Blaine, Minnesota, for her photograph featuring a man of Hmong descent, “untitled (man)” (2019). This year’s commended artists are Elsa María Meléndez of Caguas, Puerto Rico, for her textile-based work “Milk” (2020). Collaborators Joel Daniel Phillips and Quraysh Ali Lansana of Tulsa, Oklahoma, for their multimedia portrait comprising a drawing entitled “Killed Negative #13 / After Arthur Rothstein” (from the series “Killing the Negative”) and the poem “hospitality” (2020). Stuart Robertson of Lawrence Township, New Jersey, for his mixed-media “Self-Portrait of the Artist” (from the series “Out and Bad”) (2020). And Vincent Valdez of Houston for his oil on canvas “People of the Sun (Grandma and Grandpa Santana)” (2019).
Jurors for the 2022 competition were Kathleen Ash-Milby, curator of Native American art, Portland Art Museum, Oregon; Catherine Opie, artist, professor of photography, and chair of the art department at the University of California, Los Angeles; Ebony G. Patterson, artist, Chicago and Kingston, Jamaica; and John Yau, poet, critic and professor of critical studies, Mason Gross School of the Arts, Rutgers University, New Jersey. The Portrait Gallery’s Taína Caragol, curator of painting, sculpture, and Latinx art and history, and former curators Leslie Ureña and Dorothy Moss, also served on the committee.
Caragol is the director of the 2022 Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition and co-curated the exhibition “The Outwin: American Portraiture Today” with Ureña.
The exhibition is accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue, available at the museum’s store.
The competition and exhibition are made possible by the Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition Endowment, which was established by Virginia Outwin Boochever, a longtime docent at the National Portrait Gallery. The endowment is sustained by her family.
The Orlando Museum of Art is open Tuesday through Sunday. For hours and admission information, visit https://omart.org/visit/tickets/.
Contact Maureen Walsh, Marketing and Communications Manager, for more information and press photos. Email mwalsh@omart.org or call 407-896-4231 ext. 233.
Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition 2022 Finalists
Holly Bass, Washington, D.C.
Lois Bielefeld, Milwaukee, Wis.
Gustave Blache III, New York, N.Y.
Rebecca Blandón, Bronx, N.Y.
Frank Blazquez, Albuquerque, N.M.
Clarissa Bonet, Chicago
Donna Castellanos, Elmhurst, Ill.
Jess T. Dugan, St. Louis
Michelle Elzay, New York, N.Y., and
Nantucket, Mass.
TR Ericsson, Brooklyn, N.Y.
Adama Delphine Fawundu, Brooklyn, N.Y.
Paula Gillen, Boulder, Colo.
Rigoberto González, Edinburg, Texas
Kira Nam Greene, Brooklyn, N.Y.
Inga Guzyte, Santa Barbara, Calif.
Mari Hernandez, San Antonio
David Hilliard, Boston
Keegan Holden, Los Angeles
Pao Houa Her, Blaine, Minn.*
Tom Jones, Madison, Wis.*
Laura Karetzky, Brooklyn, N.Y.
Khánh H. Lê, Washington, D.C.
Timothy Lee, Brooklyn, N.Y.
Riva Lehrer, Chicago
Jarod Lew, Beverly Hills, Mich.
Tim Lowly, Elk Grove Village, Ill.
Narsiso Martinez, Long Beach, Calif.
Rania Matar, Brookline, Mass.
Elsa María Meléndez, Caguas, Puerto Rico*
Cheryl Mukherji, Brooklyn, N.Y.
Marianna T. Olague, El Paso, Texas
Maia Cruz Palileo, Brooklyn, N.Y.
Joel Daniel Phillips, Tulsa, Okla., and
Quraysh Ali Lansana, Tulsa, Okla.,*
Melissa Ann Pinney, Evanston, Ill.
Stuart Robertson, Lawrence Township, N.J.*
Robert Schefman, West Bloomfield, Mich.
Paul Mpagi Sepuya, Los Angeles
Josephine Sittenfeld, Providence, R.I.
Grade Solomon, Fredericksburg, Va.
Ilene Spiewak, West Stockbridge, Mass.
Alison Elizabeth Taylor, Brooklyn, N.Y.*
Vincent Valdez, Houston*
*Denotes prizewinners
About the Orlando Museum of Art
Accredited by the American Alliance of Museums (AAM), the Orlando Museum of Art (OMA) is a regional asset, a member organization of the Association of Art Museum Directors (AAMD), Blue Star Museum, and a catalyst for life-long learning in service to the central Florida community and visitors from around the globe.
The Orlando Museum of Art’s mission is to inspire creativity, passion, and intellectual curiosity by connecting people with art and new ideas. Our vision is to be a creative change agent for education, the center for artistic engage a place for civic, cultural, and economic development. For more information, please visit www.omart.org.
About the National Portrait Gallery
The Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery tells the multifaceted story of the United States through the individuals who have shaped American culture. Spanning the visual arts, performing arts and new media, the Portrait Gallery portrays poets and presidents, visionaries and villains, actors and activists, whose lives tell the American story.
The National Portrait Gallery is located at Eighth and G streets N.W., Washington, D.C. Smithsonian Information: (202) 633-1000. Connect with the museum at npg.si.edu, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and YouTube.