Power and Portraiture highlights the ways in which artists and sitters use portraiture as a means to convey power. By analyzing portraiture, students will consider how power is visualized, gained, used, justified, and revoked. Students will explore the powerful contributions to the history and culture of the United States through portraits of the following individuals:

• Rosa Parks
• Belva Lockwood
• Eunice Kennedy Shriver 
• LL Cool J
• Henrietta Lacks
• An Unidentified Enslaved Woman

Objectives: After completing this lesson, students will be better able to: 

• Examine how modern and contemporary artists use portraiture to reveal aspects of a sitter’s individual, community/cultural, and national identity. 
• Identify key components of a portrait and discuss what one can learn about the sitter through these components. 
• Discuss the artistic choices that portrait artists make and consider how such decisions can reveal the artists’ viewpoints and also influence the viewers’ understanding of the sitters’ identity. 
• Use the museum’s collection as a gateway to investigating and exploring of the visualization of power.

Keywords

Portraiture, Power, Rosa Parks, Civil Rights, Social Justice, Belva Lockwood, Women's Suffrage, Eunice Kennedy Shriver, Disabilities, Special Olympics, LL Cool J, Rap Music, Henrietta Lacks, STEAM, Enslavement, Sally Hemings, #NPGteach