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Identical twins, Roselle, N.J. 1966

Diane Arbus American

Not on view

One of the most recognized works of American postwar art, this portrait of sisters who unnervingly mirror each other presents a hypnotizing genetic mystery. Using no props and minimal staging, Diane Arbus asks, and then asks again, a heartrending question about the nature of identity and becoming. Francine Prose, the novelist and art critic, regrets that the photograph may have become so iconic that the girls, "two halves of a Rorschach blot," are now hard to see. The hope is that exhibitions such as this one might allow us to view lauded works in a new way, restoring their power by, as Prose writes, "brush[ing] off the obscuring patina of iconography."

Identical twins, Roselle, N.J. 1966, Diane Arbus (American, New York 1923–1971 New York), Gelatin silver print

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