The Heckscher Museum of Art is pleased to present Before Selfies: Portraiture through the Ages and Poised Poses: Portraits from the August Heckscher Collection. Both exhibitions will open April 25, 2015.

Before Selfies: Portraiture through the Ages, on view through August 9, features over four-dozen works from the Museum’s Permanent Collection that present various approaches to conveying a subject’s likeness.  Self-portraits and images of fellow artists, family, and friends reveal the artist’s most intimate world, while images of public figures, unidentified sitters, and character types describe our collective experience.  Changing concepts of beauty, diverse approaches to male and female subjects, and modern life are ancillary themes.  Works by Thomas Anshutz, William Merritt Chase, Edward Curtis, Thomas Eakins, Red Grooms, Henri Matisse, William Sidney Mount, Fairfield Porter, and many others are represented.   

Museum guests are invited to visit the Museum’s unique Selfie Station to create their own portraits inspired by the exhibitions and to share their photos on Instagram by including #hmaselfie and #heckschermuseum.

Poised Poses: Portraits from the August Heckscher Collection, on view through August 2, features works from the Museum’s core collection, which was donated by August Heckscher in 1920. Like many turn-of-the-20th-century private collections in America, August Heckscher’s collection was particularly strong in historical European portraiture.  Highlights include captivating works by Sir William Beechey, George Romney, and Antoine Vollon, as well as exquisite portraits by Nicholas de Largillierre, Sir Henry Raeburn, and Franz Wolfgang Rohrich. 

Also on view through August 9, 2015, Power, Politics & War: Selections from the Permanent Collection highlights the significance of George Grosz’s Eclipse of the Sun as a critique of the corrupt Weimar government in 1920s Berlin, placing the painting in the context of other works from the Permanent Collection that depict themes of power, politics, and military aggression. This close look at Eclipse of the Sun is occasioned by its inclusion in the upcoming exhibition New Realities and Neue Sachlichkeit: Modern German Art during the Weimar Republic, to be held at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in late 2015.

More information: www.heckscher.org