Peter Hujar, Ray Johnson, 1975. ©The Peter Hujar Archive / Artists Rights Society (ARS)
Peter Hujar: Portraits in Life and Death Istituto Santa Maria della Pietà, Venice, Italy
Organized by Grace Deveney, the David C. and Sarajean Ruttenberg Associate Curator of Photography and Media at the Art Institute of Chicago, with the Peter Hujar Foundation, this exhibition was one of 30-plus collateral events surrounding the 60th Venice Biennale. Drawn from the only photography book published during the artist’s lifetime, Portraits in Life and Death (Da Capo Press, 1976), these 41 photographs juxtapose two groups of images created a decade apart: mummified bodies from the Palermo Catacombs, photographed in 1963 when Hujar traveled to Italy on a Fulbright grant, and his better-known portraits of artists, writers, and performers photographed in New York in the early 1970s. On view through November 24, the exhibition is installed in four human-size rooms connected to the Istituto Santa Maria della Pietà, a 14th-century church near San Marco.
