"Facing East: Portraits from Asia," on view July 1 through September 4 at the Smithsonian's Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, explores how portraits expressed identity in Asia and the Near East. Paintings, sculpture, and photographs of Egyptian pharaohs, Chinese empresses, Japanese actors and a host of other subjects, reveal the unique ways that the self was understood, represented, and projected in Asian art.

The exhibition includes approximately 70 masterpieces from the collections of Chinese, Japanese, South Asian, Islamic and Ancient Near Eastern art at the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery and the Freer Gallery of Art. A number of the works from the Sackler and Freer galleries will be on view for the first time.

Popular and academic surveys of portraiture deny that Asia had a portrait tradition. "Facing East" reveals rich and diverse Asian conceptions of portraiture through thought-provoking, cross-cultural juxtapositions of portraits in thematic groupings. These portraits not only provide an entrée into Asian cultures, but also lay bare many of the mechanisms and conceptions of the self that inform western portraiture.

This exhibition celebrates the reopening of its sister museum, the National Portrait Gallery.