The Princesse: Retelling the Story of Art

Kristen Throop, June 28- Aug 20, 2022

Artist’s Reception: July 2, 3-6p

“For the past four years, I have been working on a single project. At the center of the project is Jean-Auguste-Dominiques Ingres’s famous 1853 portrait of the Princess de Broglie, which hangs at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City.

Each of the 36 pieces in the exhibition relate to a different aspect of Ingres’s portrait, fitting together like a puzzle which then reveals a larger narrative.

As with all of my work, it is personal at its core.

In January of 2018, I was looking for something, but I didn’t know exactly what it was. I felt lost. My marriage had ended but even more devastating to me, was the fact that my understanding of my marriage had been a false one.

On some level, I had to remake who I understood myself to be. I needed a window. As I often do, I looked for that in art.

And thus I found the original of the portrait that had hung as a postcard in my childhood bedroom, Ingres’s portrait of the Princesse de Broglie. An image which for me captures, calm, sadness, introspection and strength, the exact talisman I needed.

I became captivated by the image and wanted to understand its greatness.

I was at the end of one of our culture’s great linear narratives, “happily ever after.” But Pauline de Broglie was at the beginning of another, the story of modern art.”

— Kristen Throop