Armstrong will look at several generations of women photographers who have explored female identity as the primary theme of their art. In the 1970s and 1980s, Hannah Wilke, Adrian Piper, Eleanor Antin, Dorit Cypis, and Cindy Sherman served as their own models to critique society's stereotypes of femininity. In the early 1990s, Rineke Dijkstra gravitated in her personal work to making portraits that stripped away the sitter's facade to achieve a more psychological immediacy. Influenced by Dijkstra, and more broadly by post-feminist attitudes, a younger generation of women artists, including Elina Brotherus, Katy Grannan, Daniela Rossell, and Salla Tykka, have revitalized portraiture with fresh and provocative inquiries into identity.

Elizabeth Armstrong is the Assistant Director for Exhibitions and Programs/Curator of Contemporary Art at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts. She came to the MIA from the Orange County Museum of Art, where she served as Deputy Director for Programs and Chief Curator. Her distinguished curatorial resume also includes positions as Senior Curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art in San Diego and 14 years as Associate Curator at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis.

During her career, Armstrong has been responsible for developing highly successful publications, exhibitions and related programs, including Ultrabaroque: Aspects of Post-Latin American Art (2000), three California Biennials (2002, 2004, 2006), Girl's Night Out (2003), Mary Heilmann Retrospective (2007), and Birth of the Cool: California Art, Design, and Culture at Midcentury (2007). In addition, Armstrong was the organizing curator for American Moderns: Villa America, 1900-1950, which was an innovative and well-received paintings exhibition on view at the MIA in 2005-6. Many of her exhibitions have traveled to museums nationally and internationally. Armstrong earned a Master of Arts degree in the History of Art from the University of California, Berkeley. She also holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in American Studies from Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts.