The Brooklyn Museum presents HIDE/SEEK: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture, on view through February 12, 2012 in the Morris A. and Meyer Schapiro Wing, on the fourth floor.

Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture Installation Image. Courtesy Brooklyn Museum.

HIDE/SEEK is the first major museum exhibition to focus on homosexuality and to trace same-sex desire through early Modern, Modern and postmodern American art. Centering on 20th century portraits and self-portraits of or by gay artists, the exhibition brings together more than one hundred works in a wide range of media, including paintings, photographs, film, and installation art.

Beginning in the late 19th century with Thomas Eakins’ Realist paintings, the exhibit follows the coded narrative of sexual desire up to the present. Recognized figures in American art, such as George Bellows, Marsden Hartley, Alice Neel and Berenize Abbott, are featured alongside works that openly assert gay subjects, by artists such as Jess Collins and Tee Corinne.

Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture Installation Image. Courtesy Brooklyn Museum.

Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture Installation Image. Courtesy Brooklyn Museum.

The exhibition shows artists’ responses to the Stonewall Riots of 1969, the AIDS epidemic, and postmodern themes of identity. Works by AA Bronson, Félix González-Torres, and Annie Leibovitz are featured.

HIDE/SEEK goes beyond documenting a subculture in American art. The collection examines the role that sexual identity has played in the making of modern art, an underrepresented part of both art and social history. This leads the way towards a more nuanced and inclusive understanding of modern art in America.

Peter Hujar, (American,1934-1987) Susan Sontag, 1975 Gelatin silver print 14 5/8 x 14 13/16 in. (37.1 x 37.6 cm) National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. © The Peter Hujar Archive LLC, courtesy Mathew Marks Gallery, New York

George Wesley Bellows (American, 1882–1925) Riverfront No.1, 1915 Oil on canvas 45 3/8 x 63 1/8 in. (115.3 x 160.3 cm) Columbus Museum of Art, Ohio: Howald Fund Purchase 1951.011

Hide/Seek is on view at the Brooklyn Museum, located at 200 Eastern Parkway, Prospect Park. For more information, call 718.638.5000 or visit Brooklyn Museum.

Emmaline Niendorf is an Integrated Marketing Associate with Otherwise Incorporated.