The Double: Identity and Difference in Art since 1900

July 10–October 31, 2022 
 
The Double: Identity and Difference in Art since 1900 (2022) is the first major exhibition to consider how and why artists have employed doubled formats to explore perceptual, conceptual, and psychological themes. Presenting more than one hundred and twenty works made from the beginning of the twentieth century to today, this expansive show is organized into four parts: seeing double; reversal; dilemma structures; and the doubled and divided self. Artists in the exhibition explore questions of identity and difference—the difference between the original work and a copy, the identity of the art with the artist, and especially self-identity as defined by our own unconscious, by society, as well as by race, gender, sexuality, and other forms of differentiation. 
 
In a review of the show, Blake Gopnik for the New York Times wrote, “The 101 modern and contemporary artists in ‘The Double’ prove the vital mental impact of twoness. Come at this exhibition in Washington, D.C., from either end, and at its more than 120 works from any number of angles, and you’ll be convinced that doubling—sameness, but also the difference it’s in tension with—is a basic feature of the art of our times, and also one of its most compelling subjects.” 
 
Learn more at the National Gallery of Art.