I <3 The Portrait Gallery (Reflection)

I'm not gonna lie, I was definitely not looking forward to going to the portrait gallery at first. In my head, it was going to be full of portraits of people from 100's of years ago who no one remembers and no one really knew about. The tour was going to be led by a 100-year old lady who devotes her life to portraits and takes an hour explaining each portrait.

This was not the case. 

For one, our guide was extremely nice and she seemed really enthusiastic about her job. I liked that she made the tour interactive and kept it short enough to hold our attention. 

We were asked to pick our favorite portrait and explain why and how it had to do with identity. I honestly thought each painting was unique in its own way and each had a different identity. The pictures I put up are a few pictures I took today of a few of my favorite ones. 

The portrait of Abe Lincoln stood out to me because it had such an interesting story behind it. In terms of identity, Lincoln was always thought to be serious, and rarely did he ever smile. No other picture in the world can you find him smiling, but here in this portrait, he has what seems like the beginning of a smile. This made me think back to Goffman and the idea of the "fronts" people put up. Lincoln's front was a serious president who never showed emotion. In this picture, it is as though his "back region" has been captured and he no longer is a serious president, but an average man. Lastly, I thought the story behind the crack in the picture was cool because different people 

Then there is the portrait of JFK. I thought the story behind this portrait was interesting as well, which along with its unusual style, is what attracted me to it. JFK wanted to have the quickest portrait done of him and he hired a woman. I think it is interesting to think about how in paintings, you can never really tell the identity of the painter him or herself. I found myself surprised that it was a woman, not because I didn't think painters could be women back then, but that I would never have known unless I knew the story behind. It was inspiring that this woman became so famous just by drawing a series of portraits. The painting itself was amazing. 

Overall I had a good time today learning about not only the stories behind each of the portraits, but learning about how to interpret them. Each one had its own story and the symbolism was insane.