When you're in the M... : Q&A with Kylie Linh Hoang

Banner image: Frank Gaard, Channeling Kathy Halbreich through Sandra B (detail), 1993–4. Acrylic on paper. Gift of Joe Woodside. All photos by Russ White.

 

Have you ever walked into a crowded room and felt like everyone suddenly stopped their conversations to turn and look at you? It's often an eerie, uncomfortable moment — sometimes all in your head, sometimes very much the reality — and I think about it every time I enter a room full of portraits: All of these people frozen in time and space, peering out at the visitors as each of us joins the party. 

The Minnesota Museum of American Art, aka the M, currently has just such an exhibition on view — recently extended to run through August 3 — called when you're in the mirror... The exhibition brings together over thirty different works that span time, medium, and meaning, juxtaposing paintings, drawings, prints, and photographs mostly from the M's collection in a show that asks what it means to be perceived by an artist and what it means as a viewer to share in that perception.

After getting a tour of the exhibition — which is organized into sections about the dual invisibility and scrutiny faced by marginalized communities, the connection between lovers, and the depictions of family, masculinity, and feminity — I reached out to Assistant Curator Kylie Linh Hoang, who curated this show, to learn more.

 

Leslie Barlow, Alex, at Juxtaposition Arts (detail), 2020. Oil and acrylic on panel. Collection Bockley Gallery.

 

Russ White: It's interesting to note that almost all of the works in the show are portraits of individual people, sitting or standing alone in the picture plane. Did you have a definition of what is or is not a portrait as you curated the show? Is it about focusing on an individual more than a scene — does more than one person a portrait no longer make?

Kylie Linh Hoang: Because the show emphasizes the relational aspect of portraiture, I focused on the depths of individual relationships rather than interpersonal dynamics between multiple people. One of the paintings in the show with multiple subjects is Clara Mairs’s Self Portrait with Haupers, ca 1930. This painting is in a section that considers Mairs and Haupers as reciprocal muses. Because their relationship is the topic of the section, Mairs’s relationship with, and depiction of herself was relevant to her relationship with and depiction of Haupers. I think portraits with multiple people and consequently more complicated relationships could be a cool expansion of the show.

 

RW: As an artist who portrays other people myself, I think about this a lot: do you think of these portraits as reflective more of the sitters, of the artists, or as a collaboration between the two?

KLH: I see it as a collaboration. Both people in this relationship are opening themselves up for scrutinous observation: the sitter of their physical self, and the artist of their creative self. After my studio visit with you last year, I began to think about how intimate seeing another person can be, and how vulnerable it is to allow yourself to be seen. Your work is interesting to me because your subjects are so varied: friends, colleagues, and professional models all show up in your work, and I am interested in how your relationships with these people develop and change.

The collaboration between artist and subject is especially evident to me in Leslie Barlow’s Alex, at Juxtaposition Arts, 2020. Alex is a dear friend of mine, and I think Barlow was able to capture his charm through her sensitive and thoughtful framing and use of color. The attention to the detail in his face and hair are especially luminous, but Alex’s stance and gaze feel intensely his own.

 

Susan Hauptman, Self-portrait (detail), 1995. Charcoal and pastel on paper Gift of Craig and Lynn Jacobson.

 

RW: There are a few self-portraits in the show as well, by artists like Wanda Gág, Susan Hauptman, and Clara Mairs. What do we learn about these artists from how they depict themselves?

KLH: I’m realizing that all the self-portraits in the exhibition are by women. That wasn’t intentional, but I think it’s meaningful. I have been drawn to Susan Hauptman’s unflinching studies of her own face and body and was delighted to be able to share the 1995 self portrait from the M’s collection. It almost feels confessional to see Hauptman through her own eyes, but some of it feels like a performance as well. Sometimes her outfits are symbolic in her work, here the sheer shawl and singular glove feel like echoes of grandeur. I’ve read that she liked preserving the mystery around her work, but I can’t help but hypothesize their meanings.

While not included in the show, Alice Neel’s 1980 self-portrait also came to mind. This work shows her skill centering women in portraiture the way men have always been. Neel makes me think about non-sexual nudes and the power of taking up space.

 

Top: Frances Cranmer Greenman, Gertrude at the Organ, 1922. Oil on canvas. Courtesy of Thomas J. Arneson. Bottom: when you're in the mirror..., Installation view. Foreground, left to right, work by Kat Eng, Maiya Lea Hartman, and Wing Young Huie.

 

RW: One of the things I appreciate about your curation of this and Here, Now is your interest in rigorous research in the service of storytelling, specifically in the stories about how each piece came to be created, then collected, and ultimately curated in relation to the others. Those stories help ground both the shows and the museum's collection in something tangible and meaningful. Are there any stories that especially stand out to you in this show?

KLH: I’m a historian by training and I really enjoy being in the research stage of a project.

The most exciting development that I made for this project was the research on Nikol Schattenstein’s Portrait of Marion Davies, 1920s. In the database, we had Marion’s name spelled incorrectly, but I was pretty sure that this painting was of the 1920s movie star. To make a correction to the record in our database, though, I needed to be absolutely sure. I set out by looking at the acquisition paperwork for the painting from the 1970s and saw that there was a note from an appraiser that identified the subject of the painting as Marion Davies, an “actress, in costume from one of her movies.” With that confirmation, I started looking at some of the films she appeared in to identify the costume. After watching The Bachelor Father and The Cardboard Lover, I found A Beautiful Rebel, which was also promoted under the title Janice Meredith. Davies is on the poster for this film with the same dress, wig, and fan as the painting in the M’s collection.

 

RW: Most of these works already belong in the museum's permanent collection. Do you see this show in any way as an extension of the portrait walls in Here, Now?

KLH: My excitement for portraits definitely came from working with Bob Cozzolino on Here, Now, but I think the approach for this show was a little different. The portrait room in the M’s new wing was meant to be an array of figures welcoming you into the new space. For that reason, works were selected to emphasize the depth of the collection in form, materiality, and style. For when you’re in the mirror… I was focused on smaller sections of works that felt particularly resonant through the framing of intimacy in portraiture.

The way Cozzolino looks at and thinks about art is so engrossing and kinetic, and I feel like I grew a lot in our time working together. While they’re different projects, I’m very flattered if people feel a similar energy between the two installations.

 

Patricia Olson, Jay Torvik and Beth Bergman, 2013. Oil on two panels. Courtesy of Jay Torvik and Beth Bergman.

 

RW: The exhibition title comes from Charli xcx song 360. Was the choice to frame the show through pop music a way to make a museum show more accessible to the general public?

KLH: The choice to frame the show through Charli was actually inspired by our former colleague Prerna. During the installation of Here, Now, P had Brat (and all of its remixes) playing on a loop in the new wing. It was a fun couple of weeks where we spent a lot of time with the collection physically and Charli filled the sonic landscape. In a way, the collection is almost entwined with Brat in my mind now.

I didn’t have a whole lot of time to work on this show, but I wanted to keep thinking about portraits and perception. Because Brat is such an introspective and multifaceted look at how Charli sees herself, I think of it as almost another artwork in the exhibition.

 

RW: Do the selfies people take in the mirror and post become, in your mind, part of the exhibition as well?

KLH: Yes. I have always said that I want folks to see themselves reflected here, and subtlety has never been a strong suit of mine.

After spending time walking through the exhibition and considering how relationships impact our perceptions, of others and ourselves, my hope was to create space for visitors to think about how their experiences relate to what they saw in the exhibition. ◼︎ 

 

The author takes a selfie on his way out, pondering Charli's question.

when you're in the mirror... is currently on view in the Nancy and John Lindahl Gallery at the Minnesota Museum of American Art in Saint Paul through Sunday, August 3. Gallery hours are Thursday – Sunday, 10am – 4pm.