McNay Art Museum announces major acquisition of Alice Neel painting

Yesterday the Board of Trustees of the McNay Art Museum announced a major acquisition of a portrait by Alice Neel. Julie and the Doll depicts a slight Hispanic girl with large brown eyes cradling a blond, blue-eyed doll as she looks beyond the viewer. The 1943 painting illustrates the racial divide experienced daily by the residents of New York City’s Spanish Harlem, an uptown neighborhood the artist called home for twenty-four years. “We all seek images of ourselves —or people who look like us— on museum walls as proof that we are meant to be here, that this place is for someone like us,” said Richard Aste, the McNay’s first Hispanic director. “This portrait helps us truly lean into our mission of engaging a diverse community by mirroring our own diverse community, San Antonio being over 60 percent Hispanic.” “The McNay exists because of the vision of a woman artist, Marion Koogler McNay