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.

Date and Time: Opening Reception Thursday, February 5, 6–8pm.
Exhibition, Speaking in Pairs February 5–April 19, 2026

Location: Bertha and Karl Leubsdorf Gallery, Hunter West Building, 132 East 68th Street New York, NY 10065