WINSTON SALEM, NC.- The Reynolda House Museum of American Art will present Self/Image: Portraiture from Copley to Close, on view August 30, 2006 - December 30, 2006. The portrait occupies a singular place in the history of American art. As a genre, these representations of self are layered visual accounts of actuality, desire, and projection. Historical portraits–too often taken at face value–are granted a rare authority, a free pass to authenticity. The statesman or military hero MUST have looked like that. But portraits are negotiations. They are complex bargains between artist, sitter, and society. Was the governor that tall? Any school child who had sat for the camera recognizes the need to conform to larger expectations or propriety. Or not, as any parent knows. The desire to be recognized as an individual produces its own visual language of sly grins that push back upon convention. Self/Image explores the development of American portraiture from the mid-eighteenth century to the present day. Particular attention is paid to watershed moments of cultural change such as when British subjects became American citizens and when women broke out of hermetic interiors and took a place in public life. Another emphasis will be on images of the artist. The exhibition will feature masterpieces from the Reynolda House collection, including portraits by Theus, Blackburn, Copley, Stuart, Eakins, Sargent, Peale, Close, and Paik.