Portraits of a People: Picturing African Americans in the Nineteenth Century is organized by the Addison Gallery and guest curated by Gwendolyn DuBois Shaw, Associate Professor of History of Art at the University of Pennsylvania.

The exhibition examines images made of and by African Americans and the role those images have played in establishing and fostering racial identity during a period of radical social change. This landmark exhibition and its accompanying publication will feature paintings, photographs, and silhouette profiles to book frontispieces and popular prints.

After its showing at the Addison, it will travel to the Delaware Art Museum and the Long Beach Museum of Art through November 2006.

This exhibition is generously supported in part by Foley Hoag, LLP, Vivian and James Beard, Senator Edward W. and Mrs. Anne F. Brooke, The Middlesex County Chapter of Links, Inc., Mark and Susan Clark, Dan and Alice Cunningham, and other contributors in honor of Charles J. Beard II (PA '62).