Recreation of the Heart

Today I went to an art museum; it has been a summer long goal to go, so where I ended up was the National Portraiture Gallery. I expected to find a lot of faces and that would be interesting to me because faces are a subject of study for me these days. I feel like you learn so much about what someone is saying (or not saying) by their facial expressions. And, honestly, I can begin to see in myself my true feelings and thoughts. Sometimes it’s not a pretty thing to find out–I’m communicating one thing and really feeling the entire opposite or I’m building up walls that never knew were there.

All that to say, when I arrived at the Portraiture Gallery, I found portraits that I did enjoy studying, and, in addition, I found a whole exhibit of art produced by the Public Works of Art project. These images were a surprise I was grateful for–images from all parts of life–city, country, leisure, mines (gold, clay), natural gas storage…farm, factory, ice house, small town New York to big city Central Park. The one I’ve included here is “Somewhere in America” by Robert Brackman.

What seems most significant about this collection of art is that in a time of economic depression, someone (the Roosevelts, I believed) had the leadership to recognize the need for art to reflect those hard times. They called on artists across the region to portray the complexity of what was going on in that time.

If you get a chance, go check it out at Gallery Place/Chinatown or read about it here:

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/Whats-the-Deal-about-New-Deal-Art-.html