Speaking in Pairs – Opening Reception
Left: Bertha and Karl Leubsdorf at the beach, New York, c. 1936. Photographer unknown. Right : Bertha Leubsdorf, Berlin, Germany, c. 1912. Courtesy John Leubsdorf. Photograph by Martin Balg.
Can a portrait represent violence and healing at the same time? A photograph made by artist August Sander of Hermann Leubsdorf in 1938, in Cologne, Germany, suggests that it can.
Speaking in Pairs, on view Spring 2026 in a gallery endowed by the Leubsdorf family, looks at the aesthetic, material, social, and political layers that portraits offer—revealing how the people they portray, their makers and viewers, and the changing world they exist in connect and conflict in shifting cycles over time.
More than eighty contributors—artists, historians, lawyers, doctors, writers, curators, and more—come together for this exhibition, which presents works in a continually evolving installation and uses books, posters, and ephemera to visually illuminate the connections between vernacular photography and art, nobody and somebody, the personal and public. An array of viewpoints blurs the lines between artists, curators, and other subjects, and between non-fiction and fiction.
Along the way, we note the 200th birthday of photography (2026), the 150th birthday of August Sander (1876–1964), the 125th birthday of playwright Marieluise Fleißer (1901–1974), the 100th birthday of Boris Lurie (1924–2008), and the approaching 40th anniversary of the Bertha and Karl Leubsdorf Gallery on March 8th, 2027.
Reiner Leist, exhibition curator and Hunter College Professor, writes:
“Portraits allow immortality. This exhibition asks: Who gets to be pictured and seen? Who may tell their story? Such evidence of being present, alive, can also increase visibility or hasten our demise. Speaking in Pairs seeks to offer navigational references across time and geography, between works and the practitioners making, or pondering, them. The Leubsdorf family fled Germany in 1938 and in the 1980s descendants of Hermann Leubsdorf endowed the Hunter College Art Gallery on the 68th Street campus. Speaking in Pairs considers art's historical and contemporary response to oppression and crisis, in a space long used to offer representation to those impacted by extraordinary and unspeakable events.”
Juxtaposing images created at points of conflict and growth in history, Speaking in Pairs examines how multiple conflicting forces can be viewed and experienced in what appears—at face value—to be a quiet photograph. Dynamics between sitters and artists, and those who later view their collaborations, infuse the experience. The works convey an evolving meaning that can spark vital conversations.
Speaking in Pairs is curated by Reiner Leist, Professor of Art & Art History at Hunter College, with MA and MFA students enrolled in the Advanced Curatorial Certificate Seminar. The exhibition is organized by Katie Hood Morgan, Chief Curator and Deputy Director of the Hunter College Art Galleries, with exhibition designer Louisa Thompson, Chair, Hunter College Department of Theatre, and Tara Ohanian, Assistant Curator and Exhibitions Manager, Hunter College Art Galleries. Curatorial fellows: Caitlin Anklam and Sofia Rivera. MA and MFA students: Adrienne Keller, Sofia Rivera, Noa Raviv, Vivek Sebastian, and Ingrid Song.
The exhibition is made possible by The Leonard A. Lauder Exhibition and Catalogue Fund and is a collaboration between Hunter College’s Departments of Art & Art History and Theatre. A catalogue, co-published with Hirmer Publishers, is forthcoming in Spring 2027 and has been supported by a grant from the Wolf Kahn Foundation and the Emily Mason and Alice Trumbull Mason Foundation on behalf of artists Emily Mason and Wolf Kahn.
