“Whether I’m painting or not, I have this overweening interest in humanity,” proclaimed the American artist Alice Neel (1900–1984), who often compared her process to a sort of therapy. Primarily a portraitist, Neel was deeply invested in her subjects, who ranged from impecunious neighbors in Spanish Harlem to front-line activists fighting against a host of dangerous isms. Throughout the Great Depression and the postwar reconstruction era, Neel captured the trials and triumphs of her fellow New Yorkers with groundbreaking frankness, abandoning traditional tenets of portraiture in order to depict the humanity within each sitter. This new exhibition of portraits by Neel presents works painted over a 50-year period, some never before exhibited. —Sabina Vitale