Divided Portraits: Identity and Disability

Hilary Cooper is an obviously gifted, professionally accomplished, and artistically elegant portrait painter that has included among her subjects such celebrities as Matheissen, Salter, George Plimpton, Patti Hearst and former New York Mayor Ed Koch. When Hilary was in an accident that left her a quadriplegic for life she battled hard to regain enough use of her limbs to embark on making a series of portraits of people with disabilities in order to counter the perception that the disabled are somehow fundamentally different from everyone else. "Divided Portraits: Identity And Disability" is the result of her project. Enhanced with an introduction by Ambassador Jean Kennedy Smith and a particularly thoughtful essay by Roxana Robinson, "Divided Portraits" combines brief biographical sketches of Hilary's selected subjects along with her full color portraits of them. A very special book, "Divided Portraits" would make an excellent addition to academic library American Art History shelves, and an especially appropriate Memorial Fund collection for community libraries.