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Holland Cotter begins his piece about the ongoing portrait exhibitions in Washington D.C. with an arresting image–about a city’s self-portrait based on an idea that it has of its own power and also its democratic ideals. What Cotter doesn’t mention about the portrait on display at the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery is its reliance on a colonial, anthropological gaze. Consider the use of the same model to represent several bodies: the same face in nearly all instances, costumed in different clothes handed-out by the artist, represents a large group of–what exactly?–we can’t easily call them individuals. The colonial nation as a rag-tag assemblage of regional clothing styles. Colonialism as an impoverished fashion-parade. I wonder whether the curators have remarked on this and alerted the viewers to the reason why the figures appear frozen in a pantomime. “Dear viewers: We present you this image so that you become aware of art as a cultural practice. There is history here. You are a part of it. Facing East: Portraits from Asia is being shown here so that we may all learn about how, in an earlier moment, we successfully produced the Indian as a type. Please visit the room on the right to enjoy some cool lemonade and comment on how this practice in new forms is ongoing today.”

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