Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture is the first major museum exhibition to focus on sexual difference in the making of modern American portraiture. The idea originated, with an exhibition called “Walt Whitman: a kosmos,” which I curated at the National Portrait Gallery, Washington, D.C., in 2006. I had labeled a photograph “Walt Whitman and his lover Peter Doyle,” which elicited the response from Jonathan Katz, director of the doctoral program in visual studies at the University of Buffalo, that it was the first time Whitman and Doyle’s relationship had been openly acknowledged in a major museum exhibition. We subsequently had a series of conversations about the unacknowledged role of sexual difference in art and the place of gay and lesbian artists in the making of modern American portraiture. Jonathan Katz had been attempting to interest a museum in mounting such an exhibition for many years and he was delighted to find a willing collaborator in the Portrait Gallery.
