Public Opening Reception for Speaking in Pairs

Opening Reception: Thursday, February 5, 6–8pm
Bertha and Karl Leubsdorf Gallery
Hunter West Building
132 East 68th Street (at Lexington)

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.

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, and Tara Ohanian, Assistant Curator and Exhibitions Manager. Exhibition design: Louisa Thompson and Reiner Leist in collaboration with the curatorial fellows Caitlin Anklam and Sofia Rivera. MA and MFA students: Noa Raviv, Kendall Rogers, Vivek Sebastian, and Ingrid Song.

The exhibition is made possible by The Leonard A. Lauder Exhibition and Catalogue Fund, the Boris Lurie Art Foundation, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, and the Crossway Foundation. A catalogue, co-published with Hirmer Publishers and forthcoming in Fall 2026, is funded 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.

Contact the host of Public Opening Reception for Speaking in Pairs