“Person of Interest,” an exhibition of portraiture spanning all nine of the building’s second-floor galleries, opened at Sheldon Museum of Art.

The exhibition is on view from Jan. 31 through July 5. Admission is free.

Drawing inspiration for its title from a phrase ranging in connotation from a potential love interest to a prospective source of information in a matter under investigation, “Person of Interest” explores the different ways in which identity is expressed in portraiture.

The exhibition, which includes works from the late nineteenth century to today, tests the very definition of the genre through depictions of the literal and abstracted body. It asks open-ended questions about self-fashioning, cultural memory, gender identity and performance of identity. It prompts conversations about race and representation, institutional power, lived experience and other relevant and timely issues.

In conjunction with the exhibition, Sheldon will offer free public events.

“Portraiture and Power” will be a conversation with Joy Castro and Rhi Johnson at 5:30 p.m. March 17.

Joy Castro, Willa Cather Professor of English and Ethnic Studies at the University of Nebraska, and Rhi Johnson, a visiting scholar from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, will discuss what we—in today’s age of relentless image making and self-portraiture—can learn about the representation of femininity from late 19th-century and early 20th-century Spanish and Hispanophone artists and writers.

“Picturing Identity,” a conversation with artists Radcliffe Bailey, Renée Cox and Renée Stout, will take place at 5:30 p.m. April 2.

Three artists represented in the exhibition “Person of Interest”—Radcliffe Bailey, Renée Cox and Renée Stout—will discuss portraiture in the contexts of race and gender identity, cultural legacy and memory. Janet Dees, Steven and Lisa Munster Tananbaum Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art, Block Museum of Art, Northwestern University, will moderate the conversation. Program support is provided by Hixson-Lied Endowment.

Learn more information online.