It’s all in the bones

Winsome or sultry, reserved or emotional, shy or intimidating, famous women present many faces to the camera. The 75 images that compose “Women of Our Time: Twentieth-Century Photographs from the National Portrait Gallery,” a traveling exhibition at the Long Beach Museum of Art, portray distinctive individuals as well as collective girl power.

Feminist reformer and nurse Margaret Sanger, who was imprisoned for promoting birth control, is a pillar of genteel strength in her 1917 portrait by Ira Hill. Entertainer Josephine Baker, whom Picasso dubbed “the Nefertiti of now,” is supercharged with energy and personality in Stanislaus J. Walery’s 1926 shot of her revue at the Folies-Bergere. Architect-designer Maya Lin, who designed Washington’s Vietnam War Memorial as a Yale University student, communes with her cat in a dreamy 1988 picture, shot in her studio by Michael Katakis.

Part of “Portrait of a Nation” -- a series of traveling shows staged while the Portrait Gallery’s home, the historic Patent Office Building in Washington, D.C., is closed for renovation -- “Women of Our Time” is drawn from a collection that’s better known for paintings than photographs. Founded in 1962 under the umbrella of the Smithsonian Institution, the gallery didn’t begin collecting photographs until 1977. A former curator, Mary Panzer, made a concentrated effort to represent women in the 10,000 photographs that now compose the gallery’s collection, but many gaps remain.

All too familiar with the collection’s weaknesses, Frederick S. Voss, the gallery’s senior historian, approached the show with trepidation. “I was uncomfortable with it initially,” he says, “because I was afraid people would look for the 75 great photographic images of what we consider the 75 greatest women of the 20th century. They would expect a sort of ne plus ultra in feminine achievement and wonder, ‘Why isn’t so-and-so here?’

“We didn’t have a rich or broad enough collection to even think about going that route,” he says. “Although not all the people are household names, it really is a rather interesting and fair cross section of feminine achievement in the 20th century.”

Voss limited selections to women with significant accomplishments -- in politics, social activism, science, education, sports and the arts. But aesthetic quality was a major consideration.

“There are some humdrum, frankly journalistic portraits,” Voss says. “The one of Helen Wills Moody is not exactly the greatest sports picture in the world, but it is of a great athlete at a salient moment,” he says of an unidentified photographer’s shot of the 1933 tennis match in which Moody defaulted to Helen Jacobs.

“On the other hand,” Voss says, “you wouldn’t expect to see Eleanor Holm and Helene Madison, the two Olympic swimmers depicted by Edward Steichen, but that photograph is such a marvelous example of how Steichen introduced pattern into his work that we had to use it.”

Likening his system to “a sliding scale,” Voss says that “certain criteria trump others in various situations. And in some cases, the whole thing comes together. The picture of Dorothy Parker by George Platt Lynes is just a given. As is the portrait of Katharine Hepburn by Steichen.”

Then there’s Irving Penn’s image of Georgia O’Keeffe. Backed into a corner, with her hair covered by a tightly wrapped scarf and her swollen feet stuffed into wrinkled hose and loafers, the 61-year-old artist appears trapped but far from defeated.

“It’s a wonderful image,” Voss says. “There’s a certain frumpiness in it but also a certain elegance. It just goes to prove that bone structure is better than complexion as you age. She always had that glorious face.”

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‘Women of Our Time’

Where: Long Beach Museum of Art, 2300 E. Ocean Blvd., Long Beach

When: Tuesday to Sunday, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Ends: April 4

Price: $4-$5

Contact: (562) 439-2119