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Portraits from Timothy Greenfield-Sanders' "The Black List."

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On display in the National Portrait Gallery is a remarkable nineteenth-century painting by Christian Schussele called Men of Progress. Completed in 1862, it depicts nineteen inventors and scientists who had much to do with America’s triumphs during the Industrial Revolution. As the title suggests, all the sitters are indeed male, and not surprisingly for that era, all are white. Many of their names remain familiar today: Cyrus McCormick (the mechanical reaper), Samuel Colt (the revolver), Elias Howe (the sewing machine). In a fictitious setting, the artist has portrayed them clustered around the painter/inventor Samuel F. B. Morse, who is seated with his telegraph machine. They are an impressive group. You might call them their era’s White List.

Timothy Greenfield-Sanders’s inspiring new exhibition, “The Black List,” is a fresh twenty-first century take on the same theme: a collective portrait of people who have had, and continue to have, a transformative influence in American life. The Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery is honored to present this project in the nation’s capital and to celebrate the individuals whose images are on view.

For more information on the exhibition, visit http://www.npg.si.edu/exhibit/exhblacklist.html.

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Timothy announced the new projects while doing press for The Latino List, which has generated interest from a wide variety of media personalities—from Miss Finesse, who interviewed Timothy during a red-carpet screening of The Latino List in Miami, to Public Radio International‘s Studio 360 and Sharon Edelson of Women’s Wear Daily. He told WWD that he’ll be doing a Latino List II and is also working on “The Women’s List.” “I’m just starting it,” he told Edelson. “The first person we’re shooting is Queen Latifah.”

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Timothy Greenfield-Sanders with Gloria and Emilio Estefan in Miami for a screening of "The Latino List." Credit: AP Photo/Wilfredo Lee, as seen at news.yahoo.com.

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Gloria Estefan is among the people interviewed in the documentary by award-winning broadcast journalist Maria Hinojosa. “There were poignant and touching moments in the journey of The Latino List and every single interview was thoughtful and moving,” Hinojosa wrote in a recent column for The Huffington Post.

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Maria Hinojosa interviewing Gloria Estefan for "The Latino List." Click image to see more at the Chicago Sun-Times website.

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“The Latino List” opens today at the Brooklyn Museum, and all of us here at Stockland Martel can’t wait to check it out. The media coverage has already begun, and based on the success of Timothy’s “The Black List,” I’m sure there will be much more to come. NY1 taped a segment with Timothy Greenfield-Sanders about the landmark exhibition that aired earlier this week, and the New York Daily News ran a feature on the show titled “Brooklyn Museum reveals who’s on ‘The Latino List.’”

The exhibition, Timothy tells the Daily News, is “not just for visitors who are of Latino descent themselves, but [it's for] anyone to think about their heritage, whatever that means to them and how it has shaped them as a person.”

Later in the article, he speaks of the challenges in determining who would be on the list. “The trick here is how do you balance it? How do you have equal numbers of men and women? How do you have a range of occupations? And what makes it different from ‘The Black List’ is you have the nationalities. You have Mexicans, Cubans, Puerto Ricans, Hondurans … it’s not just one group, and that was much more complicated.”

The show, which Carol Vogel of The New York Times noted in her “Week Ahead” column, features portraits of prominent Latinos, including Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor, rapper Pitbull, and actresses Eva Longoria and America Ferrara. As with Timothy’s “The Black List,” he directed a documentary about the project. Comprising interviews with 15 of his subjects, The Latino List will premiere on HBO on September 29. For more details on the exhibition, go here.

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Related: The Brooklyn Museum to present Timothy Greenfield-Sanders’ “The Latino List”

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