Letting the portraits speak for themselves
Arts & Culture Letting the portraits speak for themselves Artist Robert Shetterly ’69 and Brenda Tindal, chief campus curator. Photos by Niles Singer/Harvard Staff Photographer Eileen O’Grady Harvard Staff Writer March 11, 2025 5 min read New exhibit elevates overlooked voices as it explores hope, change, and how we see others In 2002, two Harvard affiliates, artist Robert Shetterly ’71 and the late Harvard Medical School Professor of Neurology S. Allen Counter, launched portraiture projects driven by a desire for change. Shetterly, disillusioned by the U.S. government’s decision to go to war in Iraq, had turned to painting people who inspired him as a form of protest and solace. Meanwhile, Counter, the founding director of the Harvard Foundation for Intercultural and Race Relations, wanted to address issues of representation by diversifying the portraits displayed across Harvard’s campus. What emerged were Shetterly’s “Americans Who Tell the Truth” series and the Harvard Foundation Portraiture Project, both of which use portraiture as...