Program Description
Disclaimer(s)
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Event Details
1 Hour Professional Development
The exhibition Unknown Sitters at the Historic New Orleans Collection Museum and Research Center displays portraits from the museum’s holdings of people who are unidentified in the historical record. The sitters’ identities were lost or erased from history for a variety of reasons. When family estates were sold, beloved portraits were divorced from their historical narratives. Sometimes artists did not record the name of sitters, particularly when the sitter was a paid model.
Despite the many unknowns, these works of art have much to share. The sitters’ clothing and surroundings, written inscriptions and signatures, and the artists’ biographies allow curators to craft basic narratives of the lives and times of the people depicted.
The museums’ s annual student writing contest invites students to imagine details beyond the historical evidence in a selection of the exhibition’s portraits; to create names and stories for some of these individuals.
Join us as we hear research and creative insights curators have learned from the show and writing contest