WILLIAMSTOWN, MASSACHUSETTS.- Williams College Museum of Art will present H. Lee Hirsche: Purple Pop, a retrospective of the prolific artist's work, opening March 30, 2002. The exhibition will feature eight of the artist's paintings, and it will be on view until August 4, 2002. Hirsche, a Williams College professor of art from 1956 to 1985, produced art in a wide variety of formats, and his painted portraits from the late 1960s and early 1970s are the focus of this exhibition. In these images, Hirsche added eye-popping patterns and psychedelic shading to a photo realist style made popular by Don Eddy, Richard Estes, and Audrey Flack. Also, in Hirsche's choice of subject and pose, there is a nod to Vargas, the photo realist made famous in Playboy magazine. Although the works are wonderful likenesses of the sitters, their real achievement is the portrayal of this turbulent time in America when ideas about gender roles, sexuality, and race relations shifted dramatically. All of Hirsche's work demonstrates skill and inventiveness, but the portraits capture a particularly brilliant moment in American life and are distinguished documents of it.