The Metropolitan Museum of Art Presents The Face of Life: Modern Portraits at The Met

Henri Matisse (French, 1869–1954), Young Sailor II, 1906, Oil on canvas, 39 7/8 × 32 11/16 in. (101.3 × 83 cm), Jacques and Natasha Gelman Collection, 1998

Featuring nearly 80 works drawn exclusively from The Met collection—from artists including Leonora Carrington, Elizabeth Catlett, Marsden Hartley, Yasuo Kuniyoshi, René Magritte, Henri Matisse, Joan Miró, Alice Neel, Pablo Picasso, and Florine Stettheimer—the exhibition explores the evolving ideas about portraiture and presence in modern art.

Since The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s founding in 1880, the Museum has acquired the art of its time, building a modern art collection that reflects the shifting concerns, forms, and artistic languages of successive generations. Opening on May 18, The Face of Life: Modern Portraits at The Met offers a focused examination of this legacy, tracing sustained investigations of the human figure and the transformative language of portraiture from about 1900 to the 1960s. Drawn entirely from The Met’s permanent collection, the exhibition brings together nearly 80 works that illuminate defining currents in modern art.

The exhibition is made possible by the Kate W. Cassidy Foundation.

“From its earliest years, The Met has engaged deeply with the art of the present,” said Max Hollein, The Met’s Marina Kellen French Director and Chief Executive Officer. “At a moment when images of ourselves circulate more widely than ever, The Face of Life reminds us that portraiture has long been central to how artists explore identity and human experience. Drawing on the extraordinary depth of the Museum’s modern art collection—shaped over generations through transformative gifts—this exhibition situates these works within a broader history that will be further expanded in the Tang Wing for Modern and Contemporary Art.”

As The Met looks ahead to the opening of the Oscar L. Tang and H.M. Agnes Hsu-Tang Wing for Modern and Contemporary Art in 2030, this presentation provides a vantage point to reconsider collection highlights alongside important recent acquisitions. Drawing from landmark gifts—including the Alfred Stieglitz Collection, the Jacques and Natasha Gelman Collection, the Berggruen Klee Collection, the Pierre and Maria-Gaetana Matisse Collection, and the Phillip Guston Collection—this exhibition places these holdings in dialogue with works by Eileen Agar, Charles Henry Alston, Wifredo Lam, René Magritte, Henri Matisse, Archibald J. Motley Jr., Alice Neel, Pablo Picasso, and Florine Stettheimer, among others.

The Face of Life presents a fresh perspective on modern art through the lens of portraiture, examining how artists have sought to capture the essence of human presence and lived experience. At its most fundamental level, a portrait represents an individual, yet its meaning has continually evolved. Historically associated with power, status, and public identity, portraiture has expanded over time to reflect more nuanced and shifting conceptions of selfhood. Shaped by the cultural and intellectual currents of their time, artists have transformed the portrait into a site of experimentation and inquiry. In the 20th century, the emergence of photography, developments in psychology, war, and rapid technological and industrial change, among other factors, profoundly altered how identity could be constructed and perceived. Against this backdrop, modern artists redefined what a portrait might be, reconsidering not only likeness but also presence, interiority, and the individual’s place within a changing world.

Organized in four chapters, beginning with Resemblance, the installation opens with one of The Met’s most iconic works: Pablo Picasso’s 1905–06 portrait of the writer Gertrude Stein. In this painting, likeness gives way to interpretation, suggesting that portraiture may convey not only outward appearance but also a more intimate and psychological understanding of its subject. Subsequent sections broaden this inquiry. In Allusions, a grouping of works by artists such as Otto Dix, Amedeo Modigliani, and Laura Wheeler Waring demonstrates the range of individual expression that can unfold within a shared, traditional pose. In Proxies, self-portraits by Leonora Carrington and Yasuo Kuniyoshi further complicate the notion of realism, questioning the stability of representation and the construction of identity. The final chapter, titled Markers, features work by Max Beckmann, Abdel Hadi El-Gazzar, Alberto Giacometti, and Eli Nadelman to consider portraiture as an act of commemoration, where likeness becomes a site of memory and presence. Throughout, selections from the modern design collection, including works by Norman Bel Geddes, Henry Bertoia, Armand-Albert Rateau, and Axel Salto, extend these themes, exploring the body, identity, and human experience in related yet unexpected forms.

The Face of Life underscores the central role of collectors and gifts in shaping the Museum’s 20th-century art holdings while foregrounding artists’ sustained engagement with the lived reality of their time. The exhibition invites audiences to encounter the modern art collection in dynamic conversation with the Museum’s broader holdings, recognizing—and echoing artist Alice Neel’s attention to “the face of life”—the shared impulse to record our experiences, convictions, and vulnerabilities, particularly in moments of profound change. This curatorial approach anticipates the expanded presentation of modern and contemporary art in the new Tang Wing, the Museum’s future home for these collections.

Credits and Related Information
The Face of Life: Modern Portraits at The Met is organized by Stephanie D’Alessandro, Leonard A. Lauder Curator of Modern Art and Senior Research Coordinator, Department of Modern and Contemporary Art, and Destinee Filmore, Assistant Curator, Department of Modern and Contemporary Art.