Famous Faces: Portraits by Nancy Ellen Craig

Famous Faces presents a collection of portraits that demonstrate Nancy Ellen Craig’s talent, ambition, and breadth of style. Twenty-six elegant and intimate paintings of the social, intellectual, and political elite of the twentieth century have been selected for display in this important and inspiring exhibition.

Nancy Ellen Craig (1927-2015) was born in New York City and graduated from Bennington College and the Art Students League in New York before beginning her career in portraiture. Throughout her career, Nancy Ellen Craig’s critics have compared her work to that of Thomas Eakins and John Singer Sargent. She won numerous awards in both the United States and Europe, including the Audubon Artists Patrons Prize and the $20,000 Pollock-Krasner award. Her work now resides in such collections as the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Baltimore Art Museum, and the John Ringling Museum.

Guest Curators Michael and Christine Jones have professionally presented Craig’s unprecedented artistic abilities. An attorney, and artist and professor at University of Massachusetts, Lowell, Michael recently completed a master’s degree in Museum Studies at Harvard University, where he delved deeply into Craig’s life and art. Both his degree and his internship at the WHMA culminate in this exciting exhibition. Christine is an accomplished poet and physical therapist, and was a close friend of the late Nancy Ellen Craig.