A James Madison University art history professor has been awarded the 2024 Director’s Essay Prize for Scholars by the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery.
Dr. Laura Katzman’s essay, “Lorenzo Homar’s Cine Alba: An Intimate Portrait of North American Artists in Nineteen-Fifties Puerto Rico,” examines the life of Puerto Rican artist Lorenzo Homar and reflects Katzman’s broader research on U.S. photographers in 1940s Puerto Rico and their efforts to affirm Puerto Rican culture and identity.
Katzman will present a lecture on her work Oct. 15 at the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C. The lecture will take place at 5:30 p.m. in the Nan Tucker McEvoy Auditorium at the National Portrait Gallery, Eighth and G Streets N.W.
The essay was chosen for its interdisciplinary contributions to the fields of American art, biography, history and cultural identity.
The essay was published in the book La Mirada en construcción: Ensayos sobre cultura visual (2022).
“It is especially rewarding for my scholarship to be recognized by the Smithsonian Institution, in the nation’s capital, one of the most important, well-respected and influential cultural institutions in the world,” Katzman said.
“The Director’s Essay Prize offers the exciting opportunity to bring wider attention to the extraordinary work of Lorenzo Homar and his collaborations with North American artists at a critical period in Cold War history.”
Founded in 2019, the Director’s Essay Prize fosters leading research in the field of visual biography and American portraiture. The 2024 prize was juried by PORTAL, the Portrait Gallery’s scholarly center. Its advisors include Martha S. Jones, the Society of Black Alumni Presidential Professor, professor of history and a professor at the SNF Agora Institute at Johns Hopkins University, and Julio Capó, associate professor of history at Florida International University.
“Laura Katzman’s original essay is a deeply researched article that explores Puerto Rican artist Lorenzo Homar’s 1952 work Cine Alba, a fascinating portrait of five distinct North American artists,” Capó said in a news release announcing the award.
“In mining numerous public and private archives, Katzman unveils new understandings and an astute analysis of the work, the artist and his subjects and their lives. In so doing, she offers a nuanced reading of the work and demonstrates how it reflects key social, political and cultural moments in Puerto Rican history and, especially, its place in cultural nationalism. Katzman’s engaging, beautifully written essay is a masterwork in interdisciplinary research and analysis, and the text will serve as an excellent model for future works on portraiture.”
The annual award recognizes leading research that expands both the notion of portraiture itself and the parameters of what is considered portraiture in the United States.
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Crystal Graham
