The Face of Life: Modern Portraits

May 18, 2026-Ongoing

The Metropolitan Museum of Art

A portrait is a representation of a person, but what exactly does it represent? Traditionally, sitters have used such images to project their power and place in society, but portraiture has evolved with time, alongside the growing concept of identity. Artists, too, bring their own interests to their subjects. In the 20th century, their works often reflected avant-garde styles and ideas, the rise and popularization of photography, the impact of such new scientific fields as psychology, and the increased pace of industrialization. American artist Alice Neel poignantly recognized the special place of portraits and the urge to document people “in the face of life that comes crashing about you.”

The Face of Life: Modern Portraits at The Met considers this human drive within the larger history of the last century. Modernism developed amid great political, social, economic, and technological change, and the genre of portraiture expanded alongside it to grapple with these challenges. The selections of works communicate the lived experiences of their subjects in myriad ways, whether or not a figure is even depicted. Less focused on commemoration or conveying power, these portraits satisfy the human need to communicate with a viewer, represent experience, and document a moment of life.

This exhibition examines the language of portraiture from about 1900 to the 1960s through nearly 80 works from The Met collection by artists including Leonora Carrington, Elizabeth Catlett, Marsden Hartley, Yasuo Kuniyoshi, René Magritte, Henri Matisse, Joan Miró, Alice Neel, Pablo Picasso, Florine Stettheimer, and others. As the Museum prepares for the opening in 2030 of the new Oscar L. Tang and H.M. Agnes Hsu-Tang Wing for Modern and Contemporary Art, this installation of modern paintings, sculpture, and design objects offers a chance to revisit highlights and discover recent acquisitions by Wifredo Lam, Francis Picabia, and Laura Wheeler Waring that connect across history and the larger Met collection.

Also on view in two adjacent galleries will be contemporary paintings and sculptures from the collection that examine how living artists conceive the figure and explore related notions of bodily presence and absence. 

*Image: Henri Matisse, Young Sailor II (detail), 1906. Oil on canvas. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Jacques and Natasha Gelman Collection, 1998