Virtual Artist: Talk Jordan Casteel

Hear from artist Jordan Casteel as she discusses her painting “Barack,” newly installed in the Modern Wing. Originally commissioned to accompany an interview with President Obama in “The Atlantic,” “Barack” is based on a photograph that, unlike all her other portraits, was not taken by the artist herself. And yet the painting process remained intimate and empathic: as Casteel remarked, “The distance between us was lessened through the act of making this painting.”

Casteel is joined by Jordan Carter, associate curator of Modern and Contemporary Art, in a conversation about how “Barack” is at once an outlier and emblematic of her practice.