one of my favorite exhibitions of 2024, this quiet and unassuming show at the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery moved me. includes his usual candy piles and ticker-tape-like timelines, the curatorial edge is in really interesting pairings with portraits from the museum’s collection. a portrait of Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Tolkas is juxtaposed with a photo of their flower-laden graves taken by González-Torres, decades later. i was floored to see a photo of Presidents Ronald Reagan and George Bush Sr., given their relationship to and inaction around the AIDS epidemic, but the image was made more poignant against the somber and poetic backdrop of González-Torres’s work.
on view through early July ‘25.