Houston Museum Honors Alice Neel

Though it’s been more than two decades since Alice Neel passed away, the painter is getting her due in a new show at the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston. Alice Neel: Painted Truths gives visitors insight into the work of Neel, who worked on oil-on-canvas paintings, many of which were portraits, during a time when portraiture had fallen out of favor. With this show, Barry Walker, the curator of modern and contemporary art for the museum, hoped to address the institutional bias that relegated the accomplished artist to the margins for the majority of her career. “Neel is a key figure that we were very interested in acquiring,” Walker said. “We wanted an A-plus painting. This certainly gave me a chance to think a lot more about her work and to find out what the great ones were—and why.” Of the 68 works on display, the exhibition’s pièce de résistance is a 1966 portrait of Neel’s youngest son, aptly titled Hartley, depicts her intimate, yet casual approach to her subjects.