Picturing “Greatness,” 1987/2022

The walls of this gallery are hung with photographic portraits and self-portraits of artists from LACMA’s collection. The first iteration of this work was organized by Kruger with curator Susan Kismaric for The Museum of Modern Art in 1988, and more recently at The Art Institute of Chicago, pulling from those institutions’ respective collections to show what is commonly considered artistic “greatness.” As the accompanying wall text relays, this version is a departure from the original version and says, “we are finally seeing the incremental inclusion of women and people of color into the mix: a reflection of the diverse races, genders, and classes that define themselves as artists.”